Category: all folked up


All Folked Up: Heavy Metal
(folk covers of seminal metal bands from Iron Maiden to Metallica)

March 16th, 2012 — 10:18 pm





I think of metal and its various forms only peripherally, as some other tribe’s music, acknowledged as valid yet neither understood nor experienced from the outside. But because metal rose in the sixties and seventies, a warped response to blues rock and the psychedelics that raised intensity to a level previously unheard, I have always known it; its culture is largely unchanged in nature, focusing on a core fashion and the shared experience of the live event, even as it attracts new generations.

And, as within our ever-popular 2009 exploration of Punk through coverage, though I can’t claim to be an expert on the various subgenrae or nuances of Metal, I recognize its importance in modern culture, its ability to speak so clearly to the lost, the lonely, and the disillusioned, and its unique folkways.

From the outside, at least, Metal drips with masculinity; its predominantly male, macho stance seems to channel and release acceptance and confidence for the crowds that come to bang their heads. But the particularly antithetical, ironic stance adopted by folksingers looking to tame and temper songs originally formed around violent delivery and angsty screams has more breadth than one would expect. From Evan Dando’s heroin acoustic Fade To Black to Bunny West’s torchsong piano Run To The Hills to a myriad of coopted Crazy Train covers, covers here range from tense to tender, channeling the inner fear and the inner fire, lending doubt and dawn to songs once howled into the night.

Together, they offer a study in ethomusicology: evidence of another folk, in another space that we encounter in bursts of insight, spilling out of cars and bars, and coming to us through coverage, as we pass in the night.




Download the entire set in one convenient zip file!

4 comments » | all folked up

All Folked Up: Rihanna
(10 unplugged covers from YouTube and beyond)

January 7th, 2012 — 03:10 pm





It was inevitable, I suppose. When we started this blog way back in 2007, Rihanna was just another rising star in the pop world, a Barbadian teenage beauty queen with a sweet backstory and her first multichart number one single just starting to get coverage.

But ignoring the 23 year old superstar gets harder every year. Her continued work as a performer of hits, and as a collaborator with other rap and pop stars of no small stature, is readily admired by fans for its power, and for the confidence she brings to the table. And in the modern world, a critical mass of fans brings transformation. Somewhere out there, there’s a whole pop coverage subculture of amateurs and wannabe social media stars, armed with solo piano or guitar and voice, and though Rihanna isn’t their queen, her many chart-toppers are on their bucket lists.

The thing is, I like Rihanna’s songs. Signature song Umbrella, which was originally written for Britney Spears, caught me before it was covered to begin with; that several of the covers I have heard since are equally as beautiful is no condemnation of the source. She may be merely an interpreter of the lyrics and music she performs, but her hits have staying power.

And those hits just keep coming, with 42 singles in a short six album career proving ample fodder for coverage, and constant radioplay keeping her songs in the air, ready to be plucked and reshaped. This past year, alone, saw a neverending stream of rising stars take on her songs, including close to a dozen new standout covers both in and beyond the YouTube realm of amateur production – of newer tracks such as We Found Love, which is already enjoying initial coverage after a November 2011 release, and of still-standing classics Umbrella, Rude Boy, and others.

Yeah, not all of these are worth our time. This sort of R&B-tinged pop invites melodramatic interpretation; many of the covers today are truly acoustic pop, like mid-set cuts from a mid-nineties MTV unplugged session, and I turned down multiples of each in the same vein in my search for coverage this week. HelenaMaria, Tyler Ward, and Jake Coco and Corey Gray, especially, turn in takes on this end of the sound spectrum; all are good, if glossy, and if not folk in the purest sense, have their own acoustic beauty to be discovered.

But there’s also diversity in the mix here. Scottish rockers Biffy Clyro’s weary-voiced Umbrella segues into John West’s aching cello-and-voice cover exquisitely; from there, Mechanical Bride startles with indie bells and piano atmosphere that encase the song in ice. Ypsilanti singer-songwriter Nathan K. turns beats into slow, ragged handclaps for a haunting acoustic We Found Love. Gomez lead singer Ben Ottewell finds loneliness and hope in a driving gender-bent solo take on Only Girl (In The World), a compliment to the longing and urgency in Ellie Goulding’s orchestral in-studio take on the same.

In every case, stripped of their beats, with the melodic lines thinned and the lyrics forced forward, it becomes clear how sparse these songs truly are. Repetitive elements designed for a catchy bounce become an emotional trope, a call-out, an outlet; melodies written for dancefloor chant-along dip and soar with nuance. There’s heart here, thanks to the backdrop songwriters of the Def Jam corridors, the young, hopeful songstress who brought them to us, and the artists who fulfill the potential of these songs in their living rooms and studios. We are reminded, once again: folk is where you find it, in the end.




A tip o’ the cap to Cover Me, who first found and shared several of the newer songs posted above.

PS: want more coverfolk throughout your week, including bonus finds and previews of upcoming features? Why not subscribe to our facebook page…where there’s currently a classical cover of Rude Boy, and a new five-person single-guitar Gotya cover, just starting to make the rounds!

5 comments » | all folked up, Rihanna

All Folked Up: Frank Sinatra
(coverage from Joshua Radin, Anna Ternheim, Jason Mraz & more!)

January 26th, 2011 — 09:16 pm





My maternal grandfather was a huge Frank Sinatra fan: one of my most powerful memories of him, in fact, is of my grandparents dancing in their Florida living room, strangely graceful and oblivious to the watching world, their wistful smiles and laugh lines framing faces aglow with an otherwise unseen affection, the swell of strings and Sinatra’s voice pouring from the record player like a fog.    A year later, they would give up the house, move North, and start their relatively short decline towards death, but it’s here where I would remember them best: gliding in rare partnership, recapturing a lifetime I can only imagine.   

Like many of us just now starting to tip over into middle age, I suspect, my awareness of old-school singers like Frank Sinatra is peripheral, and predominantly second-hand. For my generation, the man is more present through satire than anywhere – that, and the fragments of original sound that clutter the stream, the pop cultural echoes that slip into commerce and language, marking class consciousness and an undeniable Americanism. Doo be doo be doo, that Jersey accent, the mafia posturing, the Mia Farrow connection: these things flit like retinal floaters in us all, and need not be rehashed, for they are eternal as our ancestors, are as much a part of who we are together as butterflies, Woodstock, or the fault line which threatens the land mass of California.

But let us give the man his proper due: a self-made man, confident and cool, Sinatra had an incredible impact and meaning for his time. Most relevantly, for our purposes, Ol’ Blue Eyes was known for a particularly stylized vocal delivery - a perfect-pitch power just right for Vegas, easy to parody but hard to get just right, one which always struck me as a bit over the top even in his more tender moments.  

To translate these songs in the folk idiom is to attempt a very different sort of success by definition, then: to find the emotional core in a way that seems more authentic, more organic, more about community than performer and performance.


Like Elvis, Sinatra was as much of an interpreter and arranger of song as anything, popularizing and reclaiming strand after strand of the pop, jazz, blues and showtunes canons, weaving them together through his own inimitable approach.   From an ethnographic standpoint, this fuzzy, often second-hand ownership of his song is a relatively strong case for the Rat Pack as a branch of the folkways, but it makes it hard to justify using that songbook as fodder for one of our Covered in Folk features, which tend to focus on songs sourced from original performance, not popular performance.  

But it does allow us to return to a much more fun lens – one which rears its head but occasionally here on Cover Lay Down, when we turn our attention to those who are often covered with a tongue-in-cheek flavor, even if sincerity results. Seldom-seen explorations in this vein have previously included Britney Spears, Modest Mouse, Punk, and Gangsta Rap, with Rihanna on deck for the coming months.    And sure enough, today’s coverage yaws wide, though it leans towards the folkie-gone-crooner side: from a multitude of indiefolk and Americana artists in gleeful lounge mode to Cat Power’s total indie-blues deconstruction of New York, New York to the sweet, gentle strains of Joshua Radin, who – as we’ve learned previously – can make even the Sesame Street theme song sound maudlin and coy.    

Listen, and enjoy.




Previously on Cover Lay Down: Hayward Williams covers Fred Astaire original (and Sinatra standard) One For My Baby.

1,284 comments » | all folked up, Frank Sinatra

All Folked Up: Modest Mouse
(covers from Ben Lee, Joshua James, Josh Ritter, Sun Kil Moon & more!)

September 14th, 2010 — 08:56 pm





Choice of coverage says so much about a folksinger’s generational outlook. Okay, every once in a while, someone like Peter Gabriel comes along with a Bon Iver cover, or Richard Shindell takes on Josh Ritter, and the world turns topsy turvy for a week or two. And though she’s not really my cup of tea, Joan Baez has made a point in her middle age of promoting and celebrating the works of others younger than herself, from Ritter to Dave Carter.

But generally, such things are the exception, not the rule. Case in point: though I had to head to the archives just to see if I had heard any of their work, a holy host of younger, cooler artists than I have paid tribute to under-40 indie rockers Modest Mouse in the past six years or so, making it clear that – just as Big Star covers were a nod and a wink to a slightly older set once upon a time – covering the seminal Portland-based alt-band these days serves as an encoded message to a particular set of Generation Y hipsters that yes, we know what you’ve been through, and we’re right there with you, bro.

Of course, their spacey post-progrock songs strip down marvelously; we’d be hard pressed to justify their celebration if they didn’t. Recent feature artist Mark Kozolek, performing as Sun Kil Moon, proves this thesis nicely with Tiny Cities, his 2005 whole-album tribute to the band’s songbook. And Modest Mouse greatest hit Float On, especially, has found a fine resonance in the hands of several artists, including Australian popfolker Ben Lee, a bevy of sweet-voiced YouTube amateurs, and, most recently, raw acoustic folkrockers Heathers, who are offering their own take as a freebie in exchange for an email.

But the band in question remains more than a one-hit wonder, and for good reason: from popfolk to bluegrass to indie, these songs carry the often-dark weight of their particular time and place, making them well worth the coverage. Check ‘em out to see what I mean.

*NOT a cover, but a song with the same name well worth listening to…*




In totally unrelated news, we’re ecstatic to announce that our little house concert series A Tree Falls Productions will be hosting acoustic singer-songwriter Chuck E. Costa over at a friend’s stately manor this weekend as a kick-off for the 2010-2011 season. If you’re within driving distance (Hartford CT; Northampton, Worcester, and Springfield MA), and are up for a Saturday evening of gorgeous songs and stunning songwriting in an intimate setting, let me know asap, okay?

Either way, of course, Chuck’s brand new album Waterproof Matches – his first as one third of newly formed group Mon Monarch – is absolutely incredible, with catchy hooks, soaring vocals, sparse production, and tender lyrics. Though it sports nary a cover, you can and should stream the whole thing at bandcamp here, and then pick it up for the proverbial buck. Trust me.

1,807 comments » | all folked up, Modest Mouse

California Coverfolk, Vol 4:
The Punk Rock Collection, Revisited

August 10th, 2010 — 11:17 pm





If you’ve been playing along, you already know that we’re blogging from the road as we drive North up the California coast, with a day or two each in Eugene and Portland before we head homeward a week from today. In fact, if today goes as planned, we’ll be wand’ring (and camping) amidst the redwoods as this post goes live.

As is our tradition here on Cover Lay Down, our immersion in the culture and landscape of a particular vacation region has precipitated a series of features which connect our coverfolk mandate to the highways and byways we travel. So far, we’ve presented three: an exploration of California in song, Dave Alvin’s tribute to his fellow Californian singer-songwriters, and a close look at the songbook of Kate Wolf, a long-gone but not forgotten folksinger whose songs often celebrated her native state.

Today, as we approach California’s Northern border, we broaden the boundaries a bit with a look at the California Punk scene through the lens of coverage.


As I noted in our 2009 Year In Review, last November’s study of seminal first-wave Punk Rock covers was our most popular post ever here at Cover Lay Down, and I haven’t forgotten that it came with a promise of an eventual follow-up, which would feature covers from the last 25 years of punk music’s ouvre. While I’m not prepared to present something so momentous while we’re on the road, looking through the archives in search of artists who scream California, it’s hard to avoid the prominence of Punk.

Indeed, though London, Washington DC, New York and Boston all played their part, more than almost anywhere, California plays as major role a role in the resurgence of punk music in the last generation as it did in the Americanization of early hardcore punk music in the early eighties, with thriving scenes throughout the state and a Wikipedia entry on the subject to prove it. Thanks in part to local punk labels such as Fat Wreck Chords, Alternative Tentacles and Lookout! Records, the Golden State is able to lay definitive claim to the origin of the Skate Punk subgenre, and it remains the home to several major players in both the Pop Punk and third-wave Ska Punk hybridizations of the late eighties and early nineties, from Green Day, Blink 182 and the Offspring to Sublime and No Doubt.

As an outsider to punk music, I’m in no position to suggest that there is something sonically distinctive about any or all of these performers or subgenres – though it seems intuitively obvious to note that Skate Punk is often distinguished by its association with both skate culture and the aggressive, fast-paced motions of skateboarding itself. But I will note that, as in the previous incarnation of our Punk Covers series, the vast majority of these songs play out as beautiful, raw, even delicate tributes in the adept hands of these predominantly solo and stripped-down performers. So here’s a short set of songs made famous by the post-second wave California crowd, all folked up and pretty as you please.



PS: I looked and looked, but can’t find any decent folk-y No Doubt covers. Got any leads? Leave ‘em in the comments…

1,678 comments » | all folked up, California Coverfolk

All Folked Up: Gangsta Rap Sincere, Streetsmart, and Straight Up Folk

April 1st, 2008 — 09:45 am


As a culture vulture, I have a particular fondness for the iconography of Hip Hop and Hardcore Rap; as a fan of trope and politic, I’ve always admired the complex rhyme and rhythm they bring to the table.

But I never really made a connection with hardcore rap as a cultural form. I’m an outsider on the streets; I can appreciate their gritty reality only as a sociologist can appreciate the poverty dynamic of his cityscape under the microscope. Though a six month stint in Boston’s inner city as a member of Americorps makes me somewhat more than an urban tourist, I make no claim that it gives me credibility to speak to the relative merits of, say, East Coast over West Coast style.

Even when I try to embrace the less hardcore side of the hip hop world, I know I’m just visiting. I’ve seen De La Soul and KRS-ONE in concert, but I felt awkward in the audience. I tried to write a rap lyric, but my friends were right to laugh at me. (Two words: iambic pentameter.)

But where the plastic lip-sync spectacle of Britney Spears (see All Folked Up, Vol. 1) is the polar opposite of folk, and where the lighter forms of Hip Hop are probably closer to R&B spoken-word poetry and Funk than anything else, I think Gangsta Rap can make a legitimate claim as street folk.

Sure, musically, anything built predominantly out of beatboxing, drum machines, and an atonal delivery is about as far from the singer-songwriter model as it gets; you’d be hard pressed to find a folk song with no melody to carry it. And the highly stylized, high-adrenalin street pose of the Gangsta lyric is hard to reconcile with the open-hearted communion that most associate with the folksinger in performance.

But the way that Gangsta Rap captures the authentic experience and emotion of an urban generation is most definitely “of the folk”. The collaborative process which typifies Rap and Hip-Hop performance – both onstage and with the audience – is very much in a vein with the traditional relationship between the folk performer and his audience. The use of sampled sound is a kind of cultural recycling which could arguably be compared to the tendency towards community ownership of traditional song in the folkworld. And if we make allowances for the differences in environment, both the storytelling and the narrative structure of hardcore rap forms turn out to be surprisingly consistent with the way folk has always used the natural world to speak for the inner life of the song’s subject.

To note that today’s songs are, one and all, truly beautiful in their own way is not to deny the beauty of the originals. The high tension between Nina Gordon‘s sweet voice and gentle acoustic guitar and the obscenity-laden lyric of NWA signature song Straight Out Of Compton merely reframes the deeply personal history and strong, complex emotion of the original, making it newly accessible. The etherial layers Ben Folds brings to Bitches Ain’t Shit only exposes the frustration family man Dr. Dre feels about the unavoidably mysogynistic pose of the streets to which he owes his life and livelihood.

Gin and Juice comes off wild and desperate in The Gourds’ juked up bluegrass, but wasn’t it always a song on the edge? Alt-punkers Dynamite Hack join in with a great, mellow acoustic take on NWA’s Boyz in the Hood (thanks to Adam, John, and Sledge for the recommendation). U Penn a capella group Off The Beat’s oft-mislabelled version of Gangsta’s Paradise is gorgeous and gospel, more tribute than interpretation.

Grandmaster Flash recorded The Message in 1982, long before urban blight turned to the gangsta life, but the weary note young alt-folkster Willy Mason brings to his recent rendition reminds us how prescient a warning the song really was. And the fact that the highest energies post-dorks Barenaked Ladies can bring to bear on Public Enemy’s political hip hop anthem Fight the Power fall far, far short of anything remotely resembling anger only reinforces just how far most of Canada really is from the streets of the hardcore world.

I seriously considered switching out today’s covers for the originals as an April Fools spoof. But the best hoaxes are subtle, almost beautiful in their believability. And each of these performances is something special, simultanously a hoax and a masterpiece, teetering on the edge of sincerity like a gangster caught between the rock of urban decay and the social pose that is, in the end, all that is left to matter. So mind the language, folks. And enjoy a short set of the folk of the street.

Happy April Fools’ Day, everyone. We’ll be back late Wednesday, and again on Sunday, with a serious look at some real folk artists.

1,157 comments » | all folked up, April Fools Day, Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds, Nina Gordon, Rockapella, The Gourds, Willy Mason

All Folked Up: Britney Spears Stripped Down, Sweet, and Seriously Scary

October 31st, 2007 — 07:51 am

You can’t get much farther from the stripped-down authenticity of folk music than the lip-synch spectacle of top 40 pop songs; the odd Springsteen or Dylan anomaly aside, the stuff we favor on Cover Lay Down doesn’t see mass market radio play. But that doesn’t necessarily make every folk cover of every song originally performed by a half-naked ex-Mouseketeer a joke. A good song is a good song is a good song — and sometimes it takes a jolt to the system to allow the listener to bring new meaning to the overly familiar.

To prove this theory, for our Halloween special, I went in search of the most disturbing set of folk covers I could imagine.

Folk covers of Britney Spears songs.

And the scariest part is, some of them are quite good.

Some are not, of course. It’s hard to make meaning out of something played to death, harder still to keep the MTV imagery from invading the brain, corrupting any sincere attempt at rehabilitating a popsong. It’s easier to make a joke out of the familiar instead, making easy laughs and easier cash on a novelty act.

Today, in an attempt to explore this admittedly simplistic model for envisioning the pop cover song’s purpose, we bring you a double trio of folked-up Britney cuts: the merely covered, and the genuinely recovered. Some may make you weep. Some will make you laugh. One or two will make you wonder why Max Martin (the man behind the Britney throne) is wasting his time writing tunes which will never be truly appreciated by anyone above the age of fourteen.

My recommendation: listen to each of these through, tricks and treats alike, until you can truly appreciate them for the meaning their coverartists bring. Even novelty is worth something. And plucking a tired backbeat from the radio to breathe new and vibrant life into it, making something golden out of something glittery? In the world of coversongs, it’s the holy grail.

Let’s start, then, with the good stuff. Ladies and Gentlemen, we bring you Britney Spears, recovered.

  • Stevie Ann, Toxic
    Netherlands native Stevie Ann — my current music-crush — covers Toxic as a lush, poignant paean to poisoned love. The link here is the produced version, courtesy of Guuzbourg of french girlsinger blog Filles Sourires; but you can and should also see an absolutely incredible live-on-the-radio cover sans saxophone over at Coverville, after which you, too, will wonder why this young woman is still only touring in her native country.

  • Richard Thompson, Oops! I Did It Again
    In the “original” live recording of Richard Thompson‘s version of Oops! I Did It Again, off coveralbum 1000 Years of Popular Music, his audience thinks he’s making fun of the song. This much tighter solo cut from an NPR session reveals otherwise. Thompson’s rough voice, loose tempo, and all-around angst bring just the right note of self-flagellation and regret to the tune. Originally via always great oft-folk musicblog The Late Greats.
  • Fountains Of Wayne, Hit Me Baby One More Time
    Okay, Fountains Of Wayne isn’t folk, but I’ve missed the band at two folk festivals so far, so I’m going to allow it. Their all-male electrified alt-geekrock version of Hit Me Baby One More Time turns what had been a dubiously anti-feminist anthem of love at all costs into a soft plea for the sensitive guy trying to make sense of a world full of Britney-lovers.

Second verse, same as the first — but where the folktunes above are genuinely successful attempts to rescue surprisingly decent songs, these either play the songs for laughs, tongue firmly in cheek, or try to interpret beyond their reach.

  • The BossHoss, Toxic
    Kitschmeisters The BossHoss, Germany’s bluegrass/country/rock answer to Richard Cheese, take on Toxic. They’re tight, and worth the novelty, but really, if you’ve heard one Hayseed Dixie, you’ve heard them all. Still, their cover choices are fun; kudos to Motel De Moka, the music blog with a knack for the perfect themed playlist, for spreading this around just when I needed a pick-me-up.

  • Fuck, Oops! I Did It Again
    I don’t know much about the unfortunately-named Fuck, and if this lo-fi, experimental cover is any indication of their prowess and style, I’m okay with that. The subtle vibes and cello (and wind machine?) aren’t bad, but the plodding speed only underscores the overly simple, maudlin interpretation. Thanks to coverblogger extraordinaire Copy, Right? for originally posting this, though — everything’s worth trying once.
  • Travis, Hit Me Baby One More Time
    Travis‘ live attempt to unplug and slow down Hit Me Baby One More Time turns silly far too quickly. Bad sign: the band starts out trying to play it straight, but can’t keep from cracking up when they hit the falsetto call and response of the chorus. Worse: they seem ruefully surprised at their own laughter, despite the fact that they clearly rehearsed the vocals.

As always here on Cover Lay Down, all artist links above lead to artist websites, which in turn lead to the artists’ preferred source for music-purchasing. Follow these links — and the links to other coverblogs scattered throughout — for the best door-to-door treats around.

You’re on your own for buying Britney, though. Some things are too scary, even for Halloween.

651 comments » | all folked up, Boss Hoss, Britney Spears, Covered in Folk, Fountains of Wayne, Fuck, Richard Thompson, Stevie Ann, Travis

All Folked Up, Part 1: Richard Shindell’s South of Delia

September 30th, 2007 — 07:15 pm

Welcome to Cover Lay Down, folks! Hope you found us okay. For a short letter of introduction/explanation covering why the world needs another cover blog, and why this just might be it, click here.

Our inaugural cover set below trumpets Richard Shindell’s recent South of Delia, a full album of covers released earlier this year. In presenting it, I’m trying to establish a posting template of sorts, wherein posts will include (wherever possible) both a featured cover and one or more bonus covers which are related to the feature in some way. Enjoy the music!

Richard Shindell is no stranger to cover songs. Many of the new generation discovered him through Cry Cry Cry, a one-shot folk supergroup which brought Richard, Dar Williams, and Lucy Kaplansky together for an covers album and a short tour a few years back before tension between the two women in the group brought the collaboration to an end. And his cover of Dar’s Calling the Moon gives me shivers.

But it says what it needs to, I think, that though Dar was surely the most widely known of the three, Cry Cry Cry only included one song by one of their own members on that single, seminal album — Shindell’s Ballad of Mary Magdalen.

Shindell is a singer-songwriter’s singer-songwriter, a member of the same second-gen folk movement that brought forth Suzanne Vega, Shawn Colvin, and John Gorka, and a man who is just as happy to play guitar along with them as he is to share his own well-written songs. He is known among his peers as a slightly shy, somewhat reclusive genius who hides deep insight in a plethora of storysongs ranging in subject and imagery from catholicism to the refugee’s plight. Ask any folksinger of a certain age to list the ten best lyrics they’ve ever heard, and you can bet Shindell’s work will be up near the top.

So many of us were left scratching our heads when we heard that his next release would be a full set of covers. And wondered, as well, what was up with the lack of press, and the release on the living-room label “Richard Shindell Recordings”. Was this merely a labor of love?

Naysayers fear not: South of Delia is a rich tribute indeed. Shindell manages to reassess and reimagine a broad set of tunes, bringing a new poignancy to deepcuts from the familiar (Dylan’s Tales of Yankee Power, Peter Gabriel’s Mercy Street, The Band’s Acadian Driftwood) to the neofolk (the Josh Ritter and Jeffrey Foucault covers are especially well done, and let me say here: it takes both guts and grace to cover the younger generation, and to do it well.) His choices of song well fit his own songwriter’s bent, telling tales of the downtrodden, the refugee, the lovelorn, the lost — an especially masterful tactic in the case of songs which were, in their original form, produced to emphasize music and mood more than lyrics.

But don’t take my word for it. Here, take a listen to the deep yearning for place and racial acceptance Shindell brings to Born in the USA, which many folks consider Bruce Springsteen’s least meaningful song. I promise you’ll never hear it the same way again.

South of Delia is Shindell’s first album on the “Richard Shindell Recordings” label. You can get it in the usual places, but I prefer purchase through the artist websites whenever possible, so buy Richard Shindell’s South of Delia here.

Today’s bonus coversongs:

862 comments » | all folked up, Bruce Springsteen, cry cry cry, Dar Williams, Jeffrey Foucault, R.E.M., richard shindell, solas