On Making Time:
Temporal coverfolk, and a plea for support
March 11th, 2012 — 02:49 pm
As noted on our Donate page, here at Cover Lay Down we insist on remaining ad-free and non-profit – the better to focus our attention and your support on those artists we tout week in and week out, thus making it possible for them to keep their hands and voices in the game full-time, for the benefit of all.
But making and reinforcing connections between musicians and the community they serve isn’t free. The amount of bandwidth it takes to serve our growing readership runs well over a terabyte of data each month, and you just can’t get that sort of pipeline without paying for it. And having technical support at our fingertips means ensuring that the blog, and its coversongs, are here when you need them.
And so, a couple of times a year, we come to you, our beloved readers, asking for support to keep the music flowing.
Why now? Primarily, because the coffers are low. It costs about a hundred dollars a month to cover our costs, and right now, the account has just enough in it to take us into April. Without your gift, the clock runs out.
But in my mind, there’s also a strong parallel between the clock-change of Daylight Savings Time and the pacing of the paycheck-driven life. I’ll be thinking of it when I rise in the dark tomorrow to leave for work on time. And I’ll be pondering its manifestations as I dwell among the various stressors that keep us in tension with the time and attention we spend here on these pages.
And these days, I spend a lot of time thinking about money. It’s budget season in our schools, and with the Federal jobs bill gone dry, my role on our local school board has turned once again to our annual examination of how to make do with less. Contact negotiations continue in the inner-city school system where I teach, leaving me uncertain of what the future might bring, or even whether I might still have a job when the process is over. Taxes are coming due, causing us once again to sit at the kitchen counters of our memories and figure out just where our money goes, and whether we’ll need to get second jobs just to afford the basic, bare lifestyle we enjoy.
I did not join the school board to manage money, but I recognize that our yearly exploration of the district pocketbook is an important lens through which we reexamine our priorities on the ground. I did not join the teaching field to get rich, but the choice of weekends and summers off has its costs, to me and to my family.
Time, as they say, is money. And the way we ration and gather these precious resources is often less dissimilar than we’d like to admit. Our resources are always limited: to give and take an hour here, a dollar there, is to be deliberate about what we have to give, lending our hearts to that which we think serves ourselves and our communities most.
And so we come to you today with hat in hand, asking only that you take a moment out of your busy life to help out, and – in doing so – become a proud supporter of our mission.
If you’re a regular contributor, we encourage you to consider renewing your commitment, the better to perpetuate that which you take for granted.
If you haven’t donated before, we ask that you consider throwing a few dollars into the pot, the better to ensure that we’ll be here for months and years to come.
Give to Cover Lay Down, and help us sustain the words, the music, the artists and the community.
Because it’s time.
- Devon Sproule & Paul Curreri: Daybreak (orig. Harry Nilsson) [via]
- Mary Chapin Carpenter: Violets of Dawn (orig. Eric Andersen) [via]
- Jill Sobule: Sunrise, Sunset (from Fiddler on the Roof) [via]
- The Mammals: Quite Early Morning (orig. Pete Seeger) [via]
- Bonnie Prince Billy: Early Morning Melody (orig. Kate Wolf) [via]
- Ben Wilkinson: From The Morning (orig. Nick Drake) [via?]
- Mark Erelli: I’ll Be Here In The Morning (orig. Townes Van Zandt) [via]
- Susie Wilkins: Sunny Afternoon (orig. The Kinks) [via]
- John Cowan: Tuesday Afternoon (orig. Moody Blues) [via]
- Gillian Welch: Summer Evening (orig. Greg Brown) [via]
- Isaac Guillory: Late In The Evening (orig. Paul Simon) [via]
- Shawn Colvin: Twilight (orig. The Band) [via]
- Jones Street Station: Twilight (ibid.) [via]
- Tyler Ramsey: All Through The Night (orig. Cyndi Lauper) [via]
- Julie Peel: A Night Like This (orig. The Cure) [via]
- Dar Williams: Midnight Radio (from Hedwig and the Angry Inch) [via]
- Caroline Herring: Midnight on the Water (orig. Kate Wolf) [via]
Cover Lay Down has been proudly serving artists and fans at the intersection of folk and coverage since 2007 thanks to the support of readers like you.