Category: Paul Simon


Single Song Sunday: Paul Simon’s American Tune
(on being an American on Independence Day)

July 4th, 2010 — 11:28 am


American flag recovered amid World Trade Center debris


We live in complicated times, in a complicated country. Oil gushes into our waters, and each day, I watch the hurricane news, waiting for the perfect storm that will lead to the destruction of the East Coast beaches in whose warm waves and on whose clinging sand I have spent so many summers. The New Orleans project which won our hearts in the months following Katrina is out of money, though it shimmers with hope on the new series from the folks who brought you The Wire. My inner city students dwell in poverty, living lives of hardship with no obvious way out, and so do many of my neighbors, in our tiny rural town where next year, due to budget cuts, there will be no more music in the schools.

Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be America without all this trouble and strife. Though as a teacher, a school board member, a community hellraiser, a Unitarian Universalist, and a parent, I work for a better day with every minute of my being, I recognize that the Constitution is far from a utopian document; rather, the independent spirit on which we were founded contains the tensions of our continued successes and frustrations.

Still, I am dismayed by the way we have learned to think of ourselves as King George III, with our own politics and politicians as the enemy. Trust in government “of the people” is gone, as is trust in the citizenry, if the news is to be believed. On forums and facebook, through picket lines and protests and policymaking, my fellow Americans act as if they have abdicated their ownership of the dream, coming out in proud and unlistening opposition to a nation that is supposed to be their own. Thinking about the future here can be bleak, sometimes, and though I put on a happy face and promise them love eternal, I struggle to answer my children’s questions about what will be, when they are grown.

But yesterday we spent the morning in the bearded crowds at the Brattleboro Farmer’s Market, munching lumpen sugar donuts made in some hippie kitchen, marveling at the freshest of uberlocal basil and lamb and flowers, and the easy mix of tourists and organic farmfolk with which we shared the open air. After lunch we took to the Connecticut River, sharing the tiny midriver island with comfortable strangers, picking raspberries and watching as my father-in-law at the helm pulled a series of children – ours, and our new friends – gleefully shrieking through the water behind him. As night fell, we drove home through the green hills of Vermont and Massachusetts, and the girls exclaimed with sleepy delight as through the interstate treelines came flashes of light and sparks from a dozen or more fireworks shows and backyard barbecues, their temporary light fading into stars.

And though I had planned another post for this morning, my mind turned to this country, unbidden. And in my breast stirred hope.

You don’t need to go looking for America, as Paul Simon wrote in some other, earlier American tune. It’s all around us, its best and its worst. And though it’s hard to be bright and bon vivant when we are so weary from this American life, it’s all right, what with tomorrow ever another day.



I’ve spent several long car rides steeped in various versions of Simon’s American Tune, most especially Eva Cassidy’s posthumous release; it’s a masterful soundtrack for sorrow, with an undercurrent of hope that lifts the spirit. And certainly, though Cassidy brings the beauty and pain for which she has become famous, much of the success of this song can be found in 1973 original: the soaring melodies, the lyrical back-and-forth between the deeply personal and the despairingly political, which have attracted so many to it, both as fans and cover artists.

But the way the song becomes grounded in the various folkstyles of American music holds special interest to us today, as America celebrates itself. In the space among and between Darrell Scott‘s gentle fiddle-and-mandolin driven bluegrass take, Storyhill‘s ragged SXSW backstage singer-songwriter campfire duo, the rise and fall of Glen Phillips‘ live and unreleased electrified solo performance, Mark Erelli‘s chunky, slippery, deceptively optimistic home demo recording, Willie Nelson‘s typically cowboy tenor, Charlie Wood‘s majestic piano blues, Mae Robertson‘s sea chanty-inspired, gospel-voiced plainsong, the broken harmonies of the Indigo Girls live at the Newport Folk Festival, and more, these visions of America capture all the mystery and madness, the love and longing, the frustration and the uplifting determination, the quintessential spirit of the American love for country, in all its bittersweet forms.



Want to support the continued production and performance of American tunes? Then remember: though the sharing ways of folk and the political change that it so often embodies are embedded in the form, downloading is just the beginning of a lifelong process. Click on artist names above to pursue and purchase the works of the icons and icons-to-be that we celebrate here.

Coverfans interested in more tributes to America The Beautiful, including Willie Nelson’s take on our “other” national anthem and a decidedly odd cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s America from UK progrockers Yes, will enjoy this morning’s five-song set from Cover Freak. I’m also particularly proud of America The Beautiful: Coverfolk For A Thoughtful Fourth, a post we put up for Independence Day 2008 whose sentiment is worth revisiting, though the songs are no longer live.

If you have energy to spare afterwards, don’t forget to lend your support to us, too, as we continue to work hard twice each week to bring you the best coverage of the folkworld we know how to provide. Tell your friends, donate if you can, and add this site to your feedreader so you don’t miss a single feature.

1,028 comments » | Holiday Coverfolk, Paul Simon, Single Song Sunday

(Re)Covered, XV: More covers of and from
Talking Heads, Pat Wictor, Lori McKenna, Mark Erelli & Paul Simon!

March 6th, 2010 — 10:32 pm

Our music library may be vast, but we’ve never claimed to be completists here at Cover Lay Down. There’s always something missed or previously unheard, and always something new, too, released just in time to taunt us in the aftermath of a topical post.

Serendipitous addenda come from fellow bloggers, readers, labels, artists and library visits into our welcoming ears and hands. From there, they make their way back to you via our (Re)Covered features, wherein we share new and newly-rediscovered songs that dropped into our laps just a bit too late to make it into earlier features.


Our recent post covering the Talking Heads songbook has proved to be immensely popular, netting huge surges in traffic after receiving mention from both Metafilter and Very Short List. As is generally the case, with popularity comes an increase in suggested also-rans, and though many of the songs readers sent along were not folk at all – for example, I had already considered and rejected Guster’s uber-funky alt-jamband take on Nothing But Flowers and Moxy Fruvous’ slammin’ live cover of Psycho Killer as far too rock for our readership, and passed over Miles Fisher’s electrocover as fun but far too weird, when compiling our original post – this Jason Spooner track, recommended by fellow Star Maker Machine regular FiL, is a great slow-burn acoustic folk jam that fits the bill perfectly.



In an interesting email exchange with Pat Wictor after our recent feature on the NY-based singer-songwriter attempted to used his recent career path to exemplify the challenges artists face in moving from “emerging” to “established”, Pat humbly suggested that I had made the common mistake of confusing buzz with name-recognition and much more typical under-the-radar career growth – an error all the more frustrating because I myself have addressed this issue of bloggers mistaking buzz concentration as an indicator of popularity in previous posts, specifically in regards to the shortened buzz-and-fall cycle which has accompanied the rise of the rapid-fire blogging world. Mea culpa.

As Pat points out, his career continues to grow, albeit in more subtle ways out of the “new artist” limelight; recent developments include growing audience sizes, his first major tours of California, Texas, the Midwest, and the Carolinas, and a move from opening act slots to co-bills in much larger spaces. But that doesn’t mean he’s rich and famous yet, folks. Instead, says Pat, he’s engaged in “the long, slow work of building an audience, person by person,” and that’s where a blog can be a fine vehicle, indeed. Here’s a matched set of subtly different covers of Mississippi Fred McDowell’s You Got To Move from Pat’s work with frequent stage-sharer and fellow 2006 Falcon Ridge Emerging Artist Abbie Gardner (of similarly up-and-growing folk trio Red Molly) – one from his album, one from hers – to help keep these artists on your radar where they belong.



We’ve featured local singer-songwriters and frequent touring companions Mark Erelli and Lori McKenna here in fits and starts over the years: our first-year Mother’s Day post offered a pair of now long-gone coversongs from the housewife-turned-singing sensation; the release of Mark’s 2008 album Delivered occasioned a similar subfeature, including several covers which have suffered the same fate.

But their recently recorded cover of Mary Gauthier’s Mercy Now, which came to me via Bottom of the Glass, is a full-bore delight, with driving beat, lightness, and harmonies that lend a bit more hope and perhaps a touch more steel to what seemed to be an untouchable original. And sending you off to purchase the recent 1% For The Planet benefit compilation from which it comes is a great way to support ecological causes, to boot. As a bonus, in lieu of reviving old posts ad infinitum, I’ve included a few favorite othercovers from those previous posts.

Bonus:



Finally, in other covernews, the new Peter Gabriel all-covers album Scratch My Back is, by most accounts, sappy, maudlin, emotionless and tame; it wasn’t even that hard to find a reviewer willing to call it “the worst cover album in the history of cover albums.” But the good news is that it’s part of a reciprocal project, which means upcoming Peter Gabriel covers from each of the artists whose work Gabriel mangles on his own release. And if Paul Simon’s cover of Biko, released in tandem with Gabriel’s cover of Boy in the Bubble as the second “Double A-side” single from the project, is any indication, we’re in for a great ride.

Our Paul Simon cover feature is yet another part of our long-dead archives, and we’re surely overdue to revisit his songbook, so expect another round of Simon covers to come sometime in 2010. In the meanwhile, stay tuned to the usual indieblogs for Peter Gabriel covers from Bon Iver, Regina Spektor, and more in the weeks ahead.



As an added bonus, since we’re looking back that far today, here’s another stunning Peter Gabriel cover from an album featured in our very first post here at Cover Lay Down, way back in September of 2007.



Cover Lay Down posts new features and coverfolk sets every Wednesday and Sunday, and the occasional otherday.

1,100 comments » | (Re)Covered, Jason Spooner, Lori McKenna, Mark Erelli, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads

(Re)Covered VII: More covers of Cyndi Lauper, Paul Simon, Britney Spears

August 19th, 2008 — 11:15 pm

We’re in an indiefolk mood today, thanks to an increasingly large pile of new material flowing in from fan recommendations, the labels, and the blogosphere at large. As such, there’s nothing particularly rare here today, just a bunch of great web-scavenged covers, most of which had their coming out party long after we originally featured the songwriters that first made them famous — making them a perfect fit for yet another long-awaited edition of our longstanding (Re)Covered series here on Cover Lay Down.

At the height of her popularity, Cyndi Lauper’s strength was in powerful yet simply-stated melody and lyric; in simplicity, however, a song’s flexibility is limited, so it was a nice surprise to find not one but two great new covers coming out over the past few months, especially after finding so many covers of so few different tunes for our May feature on the songs of Cyndi Lauper.

This cover from Canadian indiefolkers The Acorn has been making the blogrounds since at least June, most recently ending up on This Morning I Am Born Again, but it bears repeating for the way it transforms what was once a bouncy throw-away theme for the kid-friendly underground pirate adventure flick The Goonies, turning a cinematic bit of eighties cheese into something lo-fi and fragile, full of string undertones and indie half-tension, the post-millenium’s high-culture equivalent of the exotic comfort of a warm goat-cheese brie.

Meanwhile, alt-folk trio Girlyman gives a chilling, harmony-rich rendition of Lauper ballad All Through the Night, proving once again that good songwriting will out, even through the worst sappiest power ballad production (see also: Supertramp covers). I posted Girlyman’s wonderful version of George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord last year as part of a megapost on the solo work of the post-Beatles Fab Four; I certainly would have shared this perfect live cut when we featured Cyndi Lauper songs last month if I had known about it, but the hype for their gigantic live album Somewhere Different Now, also released in May, seems to have gotten lost in the sea of late spring releases and a recent label change-over for the intrepid and outed members of Girlyman. Special thanks, then, to the anonymous tipster who prompted me to track this song down, which in turn led me to an album which perfectly captures the sweet harmonies and raw yet intimate presence that typifies a small-venue Girlyman show.

Our original exploration of the Paul Simon songbook was large enough to separate into two posts: one on his solo work, and one on his work with that Art guy. But, as I mentioned back then, Simon’s influence on music is immense; as such, as musicians new and rising continue to mine the cultural jetsam for songs that have some personal resonance, coverage of Paul Simon’s vast catalogue remains vast and evergrowing.

From the recently “released” Bedroom Covers album from The Morning Benders, with its wonderfully hushed and lo-fi versions of many favorite and respectable pop tunes, comes an echoey take on Mother and Child Reunion with shades of Iron and Wine, only played out at a tenor’s 45 rpm; Bedroom Covers is a total freebie, and it rocks: we’ll surely come back to it down the road for upcoming Covered in Folk features (we’re way overdue for a Fleetwood Mac set). Plus two versions of what may well be my favorite Paul Simon composition of all time: a pensive yet hopeful bedroom cover from the recently-featured Mark Erelli, and — for those who lean that way — a great countrygrass cover from Darrell Scott’s very promising all-covers “acoustic folk” album Modern Hymns, released just yesterday on the highly credible folklabel Appleseed Recordings, via blazing newcomer blog A Fifty Cent Lighter & A Whiskey Buzz, who also offers up Scott’s solid take on oft-covered Joni Mitchell favorite Urge for Going.

Finally: the “Britney Spears takes over culture” thing is pretty much over, but even after both an All Folked Up feature and a (Re)Covered revisit, her songs continue to crop up everywhere that indie hipsters crave irony. Today’s evidence comes from The Portland Cello Project, which finally hit stores this week after months of slow-burning hype. I’m by no means the first to notice The Portland Cello Project, and technically, they’re not folk, either — critics are calling the guest-vocalist-with-multiple-cello sound chamber pop; their myspace page lists them as indie/classical/rock. Listen through their whole self-titled debut, though, and you may think you’ve discovered yet another new folk, akin to the experimentation of, say, Abigail Washburn’s Sparrow Quartet project (which also features cellist Ben Sollee).

The album tracks each feature collaboration from the Pacific Northwest indiefolk crowd, including star turns from Loch Lomond’s Ritchie Young and indiefolk darling Laura Gibson; I especially like the delicate indietune Under Glass, and Stay, a wonderful, plucked-sting acoustic waltz with guest Anna Fritz. Captain Obvious gets cred for picking the Gibson and Under Glass for sampling. And PCP gets TOTAL bonus points here for a secret, hidden covertrack, which sets the Mario Brothers theme song to a classical ensemble sound, and then slowly buries it in a faux-military drumroll — that no other blogger has mentioned that says what it needs to about how most critics listen to label freebies, sadly.

Whatever you call it, this is surprisingly solid, listenable music, covering a huge range of pleasurable soundscape; though it’s among the more upbeat and fun songs on the album, their version of Toxic still comes across as authentic, not just some marching band cover. And since the Britney covers always bring a smile, and given the increasing prevalence of cello in folk music, I’ll allow it just this once. With a few other recent Britney covers scavenged from the webs that fall on the edge of folk: Sia’s delicate acoustic version of Gimmie More, and French-Israeli singer-songwriter Yael Naim’s ubiquitous pop-folktronic Toxic, just in case you haven’t heard it. And so the trend continues.

803 comments » | (Re)Covered, Acorn, Britney Spears, Cyndi Lauper, Darrell Scott, Mark Erelli, Morning Benders, Paul Simon, Portland Cello Project, Sia, Yael Naim

Schoolday Coverfolk: National Teacher Appreciation Week, May 6-10

May 6th, 2008 — 11:23 pm

In my other life, I’m a middle school teacher; I spend most of my days surrounded by twelve year olds, trying to balance entertainment with mentorship, and curriculum with life lessons. Before that, I taught in a boarding high school, tutored gifted and talented kids in a tiny rural elementary school, ran a before-school program, and did public demonstrations at a science museum.

And before that, I was a dropout. And before that, I was a goofball, who needed a little good advice now and then, but couldn’t really sit still long enough in the classroom to make any teacher want to defend me.

But Mrs. Carter liked me, though I don’t know why. The way she looked at me – like I had something worth watching for – made up for the fact that I was always the understudy when we were picked for the school play, always the alternate for work with the poet in residence. I learned to rise to the occasion, and to focus on doing things well, instead of doing things best; I gained confidence in my abilities. And though after that year, I turned back into the goofball for a good long time, I never forgot Mrs. Carter. And I never forgot that look.

It’s a well-kept secret in educational circles that it isn’t just the good kids, or the smart kids who get voted “most likely to be a teacher”, who come back to school to sit on the other side of the desk (or in my case, to stand atop the desk and gesticulate wildly to make a point). We come from all the cliques, from the woodshop wannabes to the cheerleading squad, from the lit mag proto-hipsters to the band geeks. But I can’t think of any teacher I have ever spoken with who is not honored and thrilled and genuinely surprised when that rare student comes out of the woodwork to say “you mattered, and now I matter.”

A few years back, at a five year reunion, this kid came up to me, and thanked me. He said I was the one who changed his life; that now he was doing what I had taught him to do, and hardly a week went by where he didn’t think about what I had taught him.

And I looked at him, and smiled, and was secretly joyous. But all I could think about was that this kid was the goofball. The one who was always pushing the envelope. The one who messed around in film class, though he always came through with something pretty cool when the work was due. The one who spliced thirty second of a shower scene from a Penthouse video into his remade music video for Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher. And showed it on the day the Academic Dean came to observe me in my first year of teaching.

And then I remembered Mrs. Carter. And I thought about calling her up, and thanking her. But Mrs. Carter isn’t around anymore.

If Jeffrey Foucault was a teacher, he'd look like thisThere are surprisingly few songs about the teaching profession which portray it in a positive light (though there are a couple of other memorable songs out there about teachers as sex objects, such as Police classic Don’t Stand So Close To Me and Rufus Wainwright’s The Art Teacher); of these, fewer still have been covered by folk artists. More common are songs about school as a part of adolescent or childhood experience — songs where the teachers are there, unmentioned, just hovering in the background. But as a teacher myself, I know that no classroom feels safe unless the teacher has set a tone that makes it safe. Even without mention, as long as curriculum and classroom exist, a teacher is always there.

Today, then, in celebration of National Teacher Appreciation Week (USA), we bring you a set of quirky covers of teachersongs, and some schoolsongs which touch lightly and broadly on our experience of the classroom, that childhood stew of fear and freedom where our personalities were transformed.

Together, the songs make a perfect soundtrack to a google search for that one special teacher who reached out and changed your life. Write the letter, send the email, make the call: let them know they made a difference today. You don’t even have to say thanks — just letting them know that you remember them, and that you turned out okay, is a rare and precious reward.

See also: Kate and Anna McGarrigle cover Loudon Wainwright III’s Schooldays

793 comments » | Art Garfunkel, Bree Sharp, cry cry cry, David Wilcox, Fionn Regan, Jack Johnson, James Taylor, Luther Wright, Mark Erelli, Matt Nathanson, Paul Simon, Petty Booka

Covered in Folk: Paul Simon (From Bleeker Street to Indiefolk)

January 2nd, 2008 — 09:24 am

The ninth post in our very popular Covered In Folk series addresses the solo output of Paul Simon. This is unusual — with the exception of our ongoing Beatles series (part 1, part 2), previous posts have covered the total output of a given artist; see, for example, posts on the songs of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground and Tim and Neil Finn. It’s also backwards, since Simon’s solo career is really his second wave of fame, after his first incarnation as a folk icon with partner Art Garfunkel.

But however tempting it was to address both phases of Paul Simon’s career in one post, it was just too much to tackle all at once. And, as you’ll see below, there’s something especially timely about Paul Simon covers, as regards a specific subsection of the folkworld.

So stay tuned in the coming weeks for the songs of Simon and Garfunkel, including folkcovers by the Indigo Girls, Jonatha Brooke, Johnny Cash, and Emiliana Torrini. And for those of you that don’t otherwise follow the hippest darlings of the blogworld, enjoy today’s introduction to a branch of folk music so new, its artists don’t even use the term.


The solo songs of Paul Simon have enjoyed a sort of renaissance in the ears of the indie world recently, due in no small part to three bootlegs floating around the blogs: Swedish indie-pop artist Jens Lekman’s radio-station cover of You Can Call Me Al, and two versions of Graceland, one from indie remix experimentalists Hot Chip, the other from Dan Rossen of psychfolk indiedarlings Grizzly Bear.

I’ve mentioned my bias towards good sound quality here before; though I know that the swamp of sound is deliberate in the case of the Rossen cover (in the other covers, it’s a result of off-the-radio taping), the genuinely hissy, fuzzy quality of all three of these recordings keeps me from passing these songs on without caveat. That said, these songs are worth serious consideration, so they’re here today, if you want ‘em. Fans of the abovementioned artists either already have these, or need them badly; if you’ve never heard these artists of the new indie almost-folk movement, these covers provide a decent entry into their core sound, but I highly recommend tracking down more of their work before you decide whether you’re a fan or not.

But though I’m fond of these interpretations, and respect them for the love they clearly show towards the originals, I also think there’s better Simoncovers out there, both in and out of the indiefolkworld.

There’s plenty to pick from; Simon’s songs address universal themes, and they are eminently singable. There are as many acoustic Paul Simon covers as there are streetcorner buskers. But most merely sandpaper these songs, stripping the instrumentation away to deliver them with broken voice and road guitar. Only a few bring new life to songs which have forever been marked as an emotional mirror for a generation of baby boomers. Now that takes talent, forethought, and perspiration.

Today, we bring our usual full plate brimming with covers of the post-Simon and Garfunkel work of Paul Simon. Not all manage to surpass the originals, it’s true. Like the newest batch, some are imperfect, albeit spectacularly so. But there’s something special and wonderful and new in each one. And the best ones, like the best covers of anything once-and-forever-loved, remind you of how wonderful the originals were without sacrificing the power of their interpretation.

As always, today’s songs are a pretty diverse set, though they tend to cluster around the solo acoustic approach. Some are earnestly, almost delicately reinterpreted, others are lo-fi, almost all are live. Very few come from artists that consider themselves folk, but each has just enough folk sensibility to be welcomed into the fold. I’ll leave it to each of you to find your own favorites. Just remember: there’s more to a great cover than who’s doing the covering.

  • Jens Lekman, You Can Call Me Al
  • Dan Rossen (of Grizzly Bear), Graceland
  • Hot Chip, Graceland
    As above; flawed but powerful recordings of covers with real possibility. The recorded output of Jens Lenkman, Grizzly Bear, and Hot Chip aren’t always folk music, but they always make my ears happy; see today’s bonus section for further evidence that these folks are worth a second listen.

  • Julie Doiron, Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard
  • Peter Bjorn and John, Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard
    Two of the post-folk indie movement’s newest, coolest musical phenomena boil down what was once a jumpin’ streetfolk tune into a folk lullaby (Julie Doiron) and an oldtimey backalley strut (Peter Bjorn and John).

  • Peter Mulvey, Stranded In A Limousine
    Plucky all-out solo singer-songwriter fare from Peter Mulvey’s all-covers subway session Ten Thousand Mornings, previously featured here.

  • Eva Cassidy, American Tune
  • Eva Cassidy, Kathy’s Song
    Two of Paul Simon’s most wistful, etherial tunes set to perfection by the mistress of dark resophonic strings and clear-voiced longing. Eva, your songs live on without you.

Follow the links above to artist homepages. Buy compilations, songs, and albums direct from the source. Support labels, stores, and artists. It’s just that simple.

Today’s bonus coversongs provide a deeper glimpse into the coverwork of Hot Chip and Grizzly Bear, key players from opposite ends of the new folk-tinged indie movement:

We’ll have a full set of stellar folk covers of Simon and Garfunkel songs soon enough. In the meanwhile, stay tuned for a post on the coverwork of folk punk artist Billy Bragg, yet another Single Song Sunday, and the third installment in our very popular (Re)Covered series, all in the next week or so.


855 comments » | Covered in Folk, Dan Rossen, Eva Cassidy, Grizzly Bear, Hot Chip, indiefolk, Jens Lekman, Julie Doiron, Paul Simon, Peter Bjorn and John, Peter Mulvey