Cover Lay Down

I’ve shared this feature several times for Memorial Day – but somehow, I skipped it this May. So here’s our traditional post in honor of those who serve, plus an ever-growing set of bonus tracks for our regular readers.





For most of my life, the military has been an abstraction. Though war itself lives everpresent in our newsdriven culture, and memorial statues and parades a recurring part of community, my concept of life in the armed forces, and the risks and stresses thereof, is based on popculture parables: fictionalized movie and television portrayals fleshed out by fleeting glimpses of men and women in uniform in airports, reporting to places I cannot imagine, to carry out tasks I could not describe.

My connection with family members who have served has been long after the fact. My father spent some portion of the sixties as a clerk typist in the Coast Guard reserves, but other than a truly dorky picture which he kept in his bedside drawer, and a few well-worn tales of short-haired inspection wigs and furloughs which I have evoked over the years, I could not identify those parts of him, if any, which were forged in service to his country.

Similarly, though my grandfather’s work developing radar in the Army is an important part of the family mythos, it was long over by the time I came to consciousness. Though I carry his dog tag in my wallet, the man I knew as Grandpa was a quiet shirtsleeved man, his service so much a part of who he had become that I never really considered how his military past had made him until it was too late to ask.

Surely, both of these men, and the usual assortment of greatuncles, met men along the way who never came back. But their stories are not mine. Their losses, if any, are their own. And so, for most of my life, Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day have been secular holidays – atheistic, with no trace of sentiment.


But teaching in a school with an ROTC program means living with a daily reminder of the armed forces as peopled by real, three-dimensional human beings. Students show up in class crisp and confident in uniform; I pass them in the hallways lined up for inspection, or pacing out their cadences.

Jerome and Lori Anna, my two 2009 graduating ROTC seniors, were still just kids, off to Prom on Thursday, on the cusp of graduation. In 2010, Pam filled the same shoes, wearing her dress uniform under her graduation gown at class day; this year, the number of 9th graders who are joining the ranks continues to climb. Their lives are ahead of them, but their choices were limited. For them, service is a way out of the inner city, perhaps the only one available to them. It will pay for college, and help them focus their abilities. It will give them a future.

And so they choose to lend their bodies and hearts to the protection of our shores and skies. And their very real and present future — fighting wars, combatting terrorism — lends new credence to the need for memory.

May they serve proud, like our fathers before us, and our grandfathers before them. May their service be swift, and their burden light. Rest assured; we will remember them.

• Glen Tomasetti: Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier (trad.)
  (from Folk Songs with Guitar, 1963)

• Julie Miller: Two Soldiers (trad.)
  (from Broken Things, 1999; via Bottom of the Glass)

• David Grisman and Jerry Garcia: Two Soldiers (ibid.)
  (from Garcia/Grisman, 1991; ibid.)

• Mark Erelli: Blue-Eyed Boston Boy (aka Two Soldiers; ibid.)
  (from The Memorial Hall Recordings, 2002)

• David Heumann: Two Soldiers (ibid.)
• Stephen Strohmeier: Brother Green/The Dying Soldier (trad.)
  (from the SpliceToday.com Folk Mix)

• Rosalie Sorrels: The Soldier’s Return (trad. / arr. Utah Phillips)
  (from Singing Through The Hard Times: A Tribute To Utah Phillips, 2009)

• Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts: The Queen and the Soldier (orig. Suzanne Vega)
  (from Kate Rusby & Kathryn Roberts, 1995)

• Grada: The Queen and the Soldier (ibid.)
  (from Cloudy Day Navigation, 2007)

• Syd Griffin and Billy Bragg: Sailors and Soldiers (orig. Phil Ochs)
  (from What’s That I Hear: The Songs of Phil Ochs, 1998)

Repost Bonus Tracks, Memorial Day 2010:

• Donovan: Universal Soldier (orig. Buffy Sainte-Marie)
• Donovan: The War Drags On (orig. Mick Softley)
  (from Fairytale, 1965)

• Katie and Liz Davis: Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier (trad.)
  (from Ampersand, 2006)

• Port O’Brien & The Papercuts: Military Madness (orig. Graham Nash)
  (from Be Yourself: A Tribute To Graham Nash’s Songs For Beginners, 2010)

• Natalie Merchant: Soldier, Soldier (trad.)
  (from The House Carpenter’s Daughter, 2003)

Repost Bonus Tracks, Memorial Day 2011:

• Michael Weston King: I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier (trad.)
  (from I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier, 2010)

• Eli Radish Band: I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier (trad.)
  (from I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier, 1968)

• David Wilcox: Let Them In (orig. John Gorka)
  (from Home Again, 1991)

• Crooked Still: Captain, Captain (trad.)
  (from Still Crooked, 2008)

• Dry Branch Fire Squad: O Captain! My Captain (orig. Walt Whitman/Naomi Shemer)
  (from Echoes of the Mountain, 2009)

• Phil Rosenthal: When Johnny Comes Marching Home (trad.)
  (from This Land Is Your Land, 1999)

Repost Bonus Tracks, Veteran’s Day 2012:

• Richard Shindell: Waist Deep In The Big Muddy (orig. Pete Seeger)
  (from Live at the Chandler Music Hall, 11/11/2006)

• Kevin Fox: Army Dreamers (orig. Kate Bush)
  (from Songs For Cello and Voice, 2007)

• Erin Ivey: Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier (trad.)
  (from Dark River: Songs of the Civil War Era, 2011)

• Laura Viers w/ Colin Meloy: Soldier’s Joy (trad.)
  (from Tumble Bee, 2011)

• Jan Bell: Between The Wars (orig. Billy Bragg)
  (from Dream Of The Miner’s Child, 2012)

• Laura Cantrell: Sam Stone (orig. John Prine)
  (from Future Soundtrack For America, 2004)

• Laura Cantrell: When The Roses Bloom Again (orig. A.P. Carter)
  (from When The Roses Bloom Again, 2002)

Cover Lay Down posts new coverfolk features and songsets twice weekly.