Category: Natalie Merchant


Covered in Folk: Pete Seeger (On Folk as an Engine of Social Change)

September 24th, 2008 — 08:37 pm

Though I believe that folk, most especially in the way it functions as a channel of engagement and public discourse, is by definition an agency of cultural change, I have been reluctant to use this blog as a forum for advocating explicit change of any one type. Perpetuating the relevance of folk as an agenda in and of itself, it seems to me, precludes taking sides for any particular agenda which might be carried by folk, lest we alienate opposing values, and in doing so, diminish the potential of folk to remain dialogic.

But it’s pledge drive time at our local radio station, and the Nobel Prize selection committee does seem to have a set criteria for signatories and public outcry as an establishing principle for prize consideration. And it’s hard to imagine anyone genuinely untouched by the compassionate, tireless work in the name of human dignity, empowerment, and awareness which Pete Seeger continues to consider his life’s work after over sixty years as a recording artist and activist.

So when my mother, who once used Seeger’s songs as a vehicle for planting the seeds of peace and justice in both myself and in the inner city classrooms of New York City, became the most recent in a long series of folks to remind me of the recent petition to recognize Pete’s long-standing contribution to social, environmental, and political change, it seemed like the right time to use the soapbox to do some particular good.

Though there are parallels to be made between the community ownership of song upon which this blog is predicated, and the ways in which Pete Seeger‘s work has bridged time and space to touch and affect the rest of us, one one level, honoring this particular life’s work is made more challenging by our focus on coversong. For, though there are certainly tunes that one can point to as written by Seeger during his long career, the question of coverage and song origin is complex and unclear in much of Seeger’s catalog.

Which is to say: the son of an ethnomusicologist and a true believer in folk as a mechanism for tying past to future, perhaps more than any artist in history, Seeger has lived folk song as if it truly did belong to the community for which it speaks. As such, Seeger’s contribution to folk was one of popularization as much as songcraft; many of the songs he is best known for have their origin in the past, and much of his better-known works, like Turn, Turn, Turn, use older components to create new works. Even Seeger’s own greatest hits album combines songs written by Pete Seeger with songs popularized by Seeger. And even the better tribute albums out there mix songs which Seeger actually wrote with songs which he made his own.

None of this precludes consideration from the Nobel folks, of course; indeed, it is Seeger’s deep sense of the social and folk environment as both purposeful and shared by all of us which is perhaps the most powerful case for his recognition. As such, first and foremost, the aim of today’s post is to ask all of you to take a moment and — in the name of folk itself — sign your name to the petition asking the Nobel Prize Committee to consider Pete Seeger for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his tireless work sowing the seeds of peace.

But of course, you also come here for the music. And there are some great tributes out there, most notably the three sets which the activist-founded, socially conscious folklabel Appleseed Recordings has released in a scant decade of existence; I’m especially enamored of double-disk first release Where Have All The Flowers Gone: The Songs Of Pete Seeger, which in addition to the Ani DiFranco and Bruce Cockburn covers below includes a veritable who’s who of big-name inheritors of the activist folkmantle, from Richie Havens and Odetta to Springsteen and Billy Bragg.

Someday, I aspire to the time and energy it would take to approach a proper post on the central influence Pete Seeger and his family — from father Charles (the ethnomusicologist) to half-siblings Peggy and Mike to half-nephew Neill MacColl and grandson Tao Rodriguez of the Mammals — have had in defining and continuing to define folk music as a social and political engine of change for almost a century. In the meanwhile, here’s a set of personal favorites with a much simpler organizing principle: songs which other folk artists of a certain political bent have learned from or associate with Pete Seeger himself, regardless of authorship, and have recorded in deliberate tribute to this long-standing folk icon.

*removed at artist/label request.

Folk and social consciousness go hand in hand; to support one is to support the other. If you have ever been moved by folksong, sign the petition — technically, a petition “to persuade [the] American Friends Service Committee to enter Pete Seeger as their nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize 2008 ” — and in doing so help make the case for both Seeger and the folk process itself as an agency of peace. Then, head on over to Appleseed Recordings for the opportunity to purchase Seeger’s work, the aforementioned cover albums, and a whole host of other folksongs from a growing stable of socially aware artists actively engaged in using folk music to change the world for the better.

Want more? Today’s bonus coversongs offer a tiny, tiny taste of Seeger as political song interpreter, just in case you’re still young enough to have never really encountered his own continued celebration of his folkpeers and ancestors:

Cover Lay Down publishes new materials Sundays, Wednesdays, and the occasional otherday. Join us this weekend as we celebrate one year of coverfolk blogging.

1,112 comments » | ani difranco, Bruce Cockburn, Eric Bibb, Holly Near, Joan Baez, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Marlene Dietrich, Natalie Merchant, Pete Seeger, richard shindell, The Mammals, Tony Trischka

Single Song Sunday: Wayfaring Stranger (On White Spirituals and The Religious Origins of Folk)

September 7th, 2008 — 12:45 am

It is absolutely trivial to note that certain songs crop up over and over again in the folk collector’s travels; after all, as our blog subtitle reminds us, when we talk about folk, we’re talking about a form that by its very nature treats older songs and tunes as part of the communication which makes us community, available to all who lay claim to culture.

But just as true hitmaking is hardly formulaic, it’s not often obvious what keeps a song in the stream. Our Single Song Sunday series explores the various facets of heavy coverage, as a lens into folk music as culture. Today, a short treatment of the oft-covered folk tune Wayfaring Stranger — a song which the popular groupmind claims is “often classified as a “white spiritual” — helps us examine the religious origins of folk.


Throughout much of recorded history, religion has served communities as both as a community locus and as a carrier of song; as such, it is perhaps unsurprising to find a relationship of sorts between folk music and the church itself. As with any folk form, of course, context matters; to note that several songs commonly associated with Cat Stevens can be found in the Universalist Unitarian hymnal says something very different about both artist and religious community than pointing out that a move to the heavily Jewish neighborhoods of New York’s Coney Island in the 1940s led to the recent release of a wonderful album of Woody Guthrie-penned Klezmer music.

To note that the folk song Wayfaring Stranger (or sometimes Poor Wayfaring Stranger) was first published in 1816 in the shape note tunebook Kentucky Harmony, which in turn was primarily an expansion of the work of John Wyeth and his two Repositories of Sacred Music, then, is to locate that song in the white spiritual canon — which, in turn, calls us to the American white revivalist movements of the last few centuries, to consider the common threads of a form of folk product which includes The Sacred Shakers, the work of Doc Watson, and many other works and performers with roots in New England, Appalachia, and other American church-based communities.

Though it echoes similar terminology — bluegrass gospel, most obviously — the term white spiritual is striking and vivid; to be honest, I’m surprised to find that Google lists only a few uses of the term, most of which seem to be part of classical choral scholarship. The conceit that white audiences had their own spriritual song, which derived its rhythm and subject from their European ancestry, illuminates folk’s origins in a way that is both new and suddenly fitting, creating a parallel path to modernity in stark contrast to the gospel folk which comes to us through african american blues music. Further, such a conceit says much about the context in which music evolved, and traveled, and spoke to and for the “folk”; exploring the term is a fine way to help reshuffle and rethink the origin of many songs which remain at the core of folk music today.

The semiotic implications of the term “white spiritual” do seem apt, when you think about it; so much of the folk which has its roots in the appalachian mountains and stark New England Shakers, after all, is about redemption, framing man’s connection to man in the context of God. And Wayfaring Stranger is an especially interesting example of the white spiritual. Though other white spirituals may be more central to the form — for example, our first Single Song Sunday subject, Amazing Grace — Wayfaring Stranger is notable for being a song which does not as obviously call to its spiritual nature. Which is to say: though both songs ultimately play out the relationship between the internal sinner-self and the spiritual Father, the former is a hymn of the post-redemptive self, less about the more modern folk-as-call-to-complexity and more about morality-play.

But the humble determination of the pre-redemptive self which characterizes the narrative voice of Wayfaring Stranger is not uncommon to the narrative stance of many an old British folk ballad, from the pining lass of Fair William to the besworn folkmaiden and lusty, easily swayed folklad who so often stray, only to regret it, and come back to their God. Meanwhile, the plight of the poor wayfarer remains open and non-specific, an everyman’s resolve pulling us in to folk communion. No wonder the song remains enticing; no wonder we find so many versions to pluck our fruit from.

In practice, whether or not you accept the label of “white spiritual” as applied to a song whose most famous version is in the voice of as haunted and searching a man as Johnny Cash, it is true that there is a certain emotional reverence common to all versions of the song. In fact, circularly, though there are as many ways to worship as there are men, and thus high diversity in the way different folk musicians choose to make Wayfaring Stranger their own, the question of what makes this particular song a white spiritual may be best answered by the consistent care with which all comers take on the song. To explore that commonality, and the variance in sound and tone and tempo that it nonetheless allows, here’s some interesting takes on the song, a vast array of approaches to traditional material from the very big tent that is modern folk.

Cover Lay Down will return Wednesday for a preview of this year’s Irish Connections festival, featuring Alison Brown, Luka Bloom, Crooked Still, Solas, and more!

828 comments » | Blanche, Chris Scruggs, Emmylou Harris, Estil C. Ball, Eva Cassidy, Giant Sand, John Stirratt, Kristin Hersh, Natalie Merchant, Neko Case, Papa M, Single Song Sunday, Wayfaring Strangers

Pond Crossings: Transatlantic Coverfolk with today’s guest host: Darius

July 27th, 2008 — 11:24 am

Let me open with a warm thank you to Boyhowdy for inviting me to do this, and for helping to bring it to life.

My name is Darius. I have been an eager reader of and listener to this blog for some time now. One day, I followed a link from here and found myself at Star Maker Machine, where I am now an occasional poster. That’s where Boyhowdy found me. Life is indeed a circle.

Many great folk songs found in this country were born in the British Isles, and in some cases, went through wild transformations, both in getting to these shores, and in continuing to change once they were here. This reflects differences in the two cultures, as well as the personalities of the people who performed the songs.

In Britain, traditional songs often serve as mnemonics to teach children bits of folk wisdom. Consider the song “The Cuckoo”. In researching this post, I was unable to find a single “original” version of the song. Instead, there seem to be variations on the set of lyrics below:

The cuckoo she’s a pretty bird
She sings as she flies
She brings us glad tidings
And tells us no lies.

She sucks all sweet flowers
To make her voice clear
She never sings cuckoo
Till summer is near

She flies the hills over
She flies the world about
She flies back to the mountain
She mourns for her love

The cuckoo she’s a pretty bird
She sings as she flies
She brings us glad tidings
And tells us no lies

I found one variant given as a nursery rhyme, where the bird is male, and sucks eggs to improve his voice. The rhyme is apparently older than the music, which would be why there a several different musical settings for the words. The important piece of lore here is that the cuckoo’s song warns of the coming of summer, which marks the end of the planting season. So the song teaches children how to tell when they are running out of time to plant crops.

Nowadays, we have other ways to know when to plant. So modern performers of “The Cuckoo” have added different elements to the song, and it is all but impossible to find a British version with just the lyrics above. Here is John Renbourn’s version.

  • John Renbourn, The Cuckoo
    (from Faro Annie)

    So already “The Cuckoo” is going through changes. But watch what happens when the song comes to America! It is brought to the South by early settlers, and vanishes into the mountains. It passes down through generations of people who have a different climate and planting season, and “till summer is near” somehow becomes “til the fourth day of July”. Characters named Willie and Jack of Diamonds appear out of nowhere.

    In 1961, towards the end of the folk revival, a banjo player and singer named Clarence Ashley was rediscovered. He had been a minstrel show performer and string band player in the thirties and early forties, and then disappeared. His story is quite interesting, and would be worth a post of its own. For now, suffice it to say that he recorded “The Cuckoo” with Doc Watson in 1961. The lyrics he used are the American version. Whereas, in Britain everyone who records the song to this day feels free to change the words as they please, in America the words have become fixed. Here they are, in a beautiful version by Townes Van Zant:

  • Townes Van Zandt, The Coo Coo
    (from Roadsongs)

    Meanwhile, Donovan is originally from England, but has lived in the US for many years. His take on “The Cuckoo” is the American version. Confused?

  • Donovan, The Cuckoo
    (from Beat Cafe)

    Returning to the British Isles, we find many traditional songs which tell stories. That Richard Thompson knows many of these is clear from the number of them he recorded with Fairport Convention. Some of these story-songs contain magical elements, and are survivals of prechristian beliefs.

    Although “Crazy Man Michael” is an original song by Thompson, its characterization of the raven is a good example of this.

    Thompson set the lyrics of “Crazy Man Michael” to a traditional melody. (I have not been able to find what song this was. If anyone knows, please leave a comment.) When Thompson brought the lyrics to his band mates in Fairport, David Swarbrick objected that the words did not fit the melody. So Thompson challenged Swarbrick to write a better melody, and he did. So a traditional song got first new words and then new music, and Fairport’s version is not so much a cover as a smother.
    Fairport Convention, Crazy Man Michael
    (live in Oxfordshire (UK), August 2007)

    When “Crazy Man Michael” came to America, it received a warm welcome from Nathalie Merchant. She changed the arrangement to suit her style, but she left the words and melody intact.

  • Natalie Merchant, Crazy Man Michael
    (from The House Carpenter’s Daughter)

    The tabloid newspaper is a creation of the industrial revolution. To make economic sense, you have to have enough people in one place to buy your newspaper. But people in pre industrial Britain still had an appetite for sensationalized versions of the news. What are now traditional songs originally filled that need. So in 1845, when Lord John Franklin and his crew vanished while seeking the Northwest Passage, a song was written to tell the tale.

  • Pentangle, Lord Franklin
    (from Cruel Sister)

    Over in America, David Wilcox obviously knew the song. “Jamie’s Secret” combines the melody with an entirely new set of lyrics. Wilcox’ tale of a woman’s disappearance gains additional resonance if you know the source of the melody. A “partial cover”, if you will.

  • David Wilcox, Jamie’s Secret
    (from How Did You Find me Here)

    Finally, just for fun, I wanted to present a pond crossing that goes in the other direction. “Pastures of Plenty” is an American song, Woody Guthrie’s evocation of the dust bowl years. In Odetta’s hands, everything becomes a spiritual, which works just fine here.

  • Odetta, Pastures of Plenty
    (from The Greatest Songs of Woody Guthrie)

    However, the song gets to Ireland, which has certainly had its share of agricultural disasters. And it rocks!

  • Solas, Pastures of Plenty
    (from The Words That Remain)

    Today’s Bonus and Sundry Coverfolk

    Boyhowdy already did a great post on the traditional British ballad House Carpenter. Here’s two jaw dropping American versions that got missed the first time.

  • Kelly Joe Phelps, House Carpenter
    (from Shine Eyed Mister Zen)

  • Rosalie Sorrels, House Carpenter
    (from Folk Songs of Utah and Idaho)

    Folk fan Darius is a regular guest contributor at blog collaborative Star Maker Machine. He has excellent taste in both blogs and music.

  • 5 comments » | David Wilcox, Donovan, Fairport Convention, Guest Posts, John Renbourne, Kelly Joe Phelps, Natalie Merchant, Odetta, Pentangle, Rosalie Sorrell, solas, Townes van Zandt

    Treesongs for Willow: A Set of Traditional Arboreal Coverfolk

    July 13th, 2008 — 09:54 am

    By the time we finally caught pregnant, we had both been teaching for a decade, and that meant the baby name books were right out. After we discarded the archaic and the merely odd, the names that were left were invariably overfamiliar — we knew “that kid”, and thus the name came with baggage we just could not accept.

    So we took a look at ourselves. Liberal folk, to put it politically, with a sense of adventure, and a love of the world for what it was. We wanted something organic, something real, something us.

    So we traded in the baby books for field guides and herbal identification charts, and named our children after trees. And we started with Willow, because we liked the sound of it, and because we had lived under one once.

    My younger child is too young, really, to understand what being named after a tree really means. But the elder one has been interested in it from the start. She asks me to sing her special song about being a tree almost every night before bed. Spotting “her” tree still brings excitement to a long drive. Being trees is something we share like a secret.

    Biology made me a father. But the girl who made me Daddy has my heartwood on a string. Her name is Willow, and she turns six this week. Here’s a small set of traditional treesongs, just for her.

    …and previously on Cover Lay Down:

    * I know the last pair is kind of morbid, but it’s hard to find upbeat Willowsongs; unfortunately, though in our house we celebrate Willows for their flexibility, strength, and beauty, most pop culture references seem to play off their nominative weepiness. If anyone knows of more Willowsongs which are not murder ballads, please pass ‘em along in the comments; bonus points for any and all Joan Armatrading covers.

    675 comments » | Devon Sproule, Gray Sky Girls, Greg Brown, Leon Redbone, Natalie Merchant, Paul Curreri, Tom O'Brien, Tony Furtado

    Single Song Sunday: House Carpenter (Natalie Merchant, Nickel Creek, Roger McGuinn, Tim O’Brien)

    January 6th, 2008 — 07:51 pm


    It’s been some week here at Cover Lay Down. Features on popular singer-songwriters Billy Bragg and Paul Simon brought us to the top of the charts at musicblog aggregator The Hype Machine and a linkback from New York magazine’s Vulture blog. On Friday, almost 900 of you visited the site, a new record; download tracking shows that many of you came in for one song, but stuck around to try something new. Welcome, kudos, and thanks for validating our goals here at Cover Lay Down.

    But a slow day at home and a new branch of our local library system got me thinking about our roots, both as a folk blog and as community members. Popular artists and indieacts may have got you here, but there’s more to folk music than the indiefolk and Grammy winners of the last decades. Above all, it is our goal at Cover Lay Down to broaden your horizons, even while we serve your existing biases and favorites.

    Today, we return to our roots for the fourth in our very popular Single Song Sunday series with a feature on Child Ballad #243 in the canonical collection of British folk ballads, a song more commonly known as House Carpenter.


    Habitat for HumanityThey’re building one of those Habitat for Humanity houses in our town, just along the main road, out past the edge of what counts for downtown in these rural one-bar parts. A few weeks ago our local church helped make lunch for the crew — chili and cornbread, the kind of early winter comfort food that can be soaked up quickly, and keeps the fires going for hours. I wasn’t there, but the story goes that they had plenty of leftovers, primarily due to the fact that the workforce that day was a group of local college girls, doing their community service. The girls ate all the clementines, though. I guess we made the food with heartier carpenters in mind.

    The 18th Century folk ballad House Carpenter, officially titled either James Harris or Demon Lover, isn’t about hope, or new beginnings. Quite the opposite. It’s a morality play, in which a woman is tempted by a finer life with an old flame, gives in, leaves her new little babe in the care of her carpenter husband, regrets it too late, and drowns for her sins. It’s about the perils of choosing style over substance; it’s about the consequences of valuing speed and beauty over community and commitment. Like our Habitat for Humanity project, it’s not about house carpenters: it’s about the girls who showed up to be house carpenters, and the church making lunch; a reminder of the value of all who help make a house, a home, a community.

    That authenticity is hard to come by in the world today is an oft-repeated trope in folk music; it is the universality of the sentiment, as much as the plaintive beauty of House Carpenter’s simple tune, which explains why the song continues to find voice in each new generation of folksinger. In some ways, it’s frustrating to find that the message is still needed, hundreds of years after it was first found necessary. But the house goes up, nonetheless. Looks like it’s going to be a cosy place, too.

    Work on our local Habitat house seems to have been put on pause for the winter. The girls who came that day to help have gone back to their lives with a new entry for their graduate school applications and, hopefully, a true sense of having participated in something selfless and pride-worthy. May their lots and ours be better than the lot of our alternate-verse narrator, who sinks and goes to hell for one bad decision. If their work on the house is any indication, they’re already headed for a better life.

    Unlike Rain and Snow, the emotion of this oft-covered song is set in the lyrics; as such, most interpretations aim for a melancholic delivery. But as today’s featured artists demonstrate, there’s a wide potential for instrumentation and tone, even within a limited emotional range.

    The fast-paced storyteller’s banjo on Pete Seeger and Clarence Ashley’s ancient versions creates a tension which serves the piece equally, if differently, from the languid brushstrokes, etherial harmonies and skeletal bass of The Tami Show’s haunted cover, the sweet, rich mysticism of Mick McAuley’s celtic ballad, or the fuller instrumentation and nuanced tonal ebb and flow of Tim O’Brien’s moody, celtic-flavored bluegrass.

    The sparse, cracked doublevoiced tones of Roger McGuinn are a world away from the mournful, driving blues Natalie Merchant brings to the piece. And interpretations by folkfave youngsters The Mammals and Nickel Creek provide a study in contrast, two new-folkgrass bands taking the song through vastly distinct but equally powerful paces.

    Try ‘em all. Find your favorite. It is, after all, the personal connection that makes us folk.

    As always, all album and label links above take you direct to the source for your musical purchase. Buy local, support community: it’s that simple.

    874 comments » | Mick McAuley, Natalie Merchant, Nickel Creek, Pete Seeger, Roger McGuinn, Single Song Sunday, The Mammals, The Tami Show, Tim O'Brien

    Covered in Folk: David Bowie (Dar Williams, The Gourds, M. Ward, Natalie Merchant and more!)

    December 2nd, 2007 — 12:52 am

    The recent penchant towards folk interpretations of songs from the popworld is really nothing new. After all, though modern folk music has turned its eye towards confessional songwriting and urban poetry, and quite often away from its agrarian roots, traditionally, folk music is not so much about the rural as it is populated by the music of the folk, which quite literally means whatever is popular in the eyes and ears of the people.

    Instead, we might suggest that it was inevitable that folk music change its tone once radio and the recording studio changed forever the hum lingering in the ears of the populace. As a result, we have urban and anti-folk, folk rock and folkpop, subgenres of folk music which often share the same production values as pop music of today. And we also get a heck of a lot of songs from the radio entering the cover repertoires of folk musicians themselves.

    How else can we explain the prevalence of David Bowie covers “out there”? Certainly Bowie is nothing like folk — his stylistic pose and chameleon-like personality are antithetical to the authentic and direct relationship between artist and audience that characterises folk music. Neither is his broken-glass poetic imagery and trope terribly folk, though I suppose one could make a case for the odd science-fiction motif as resonant with the same audience as modern folk music, and surely some of today’s choice cuts reveal some storysong structures and cultural journey motifs common to much folk music.

    A few years ago, when Dar Williams asked her fan base to vote on which song she should record, Bowie’s Starman won by a landslide. I suppose it goes to show us: part of what has always made folk music folk music is the way it tries to connect with the audience. And if this means a reflection of the classic rock radio that permeates our culture, or a shared recall of that late-seventies or mid-eighties childhood, ears glued to the shimmery radio glamstars of those last pre-MTV days, then who are we to question the origin of the ultimately authentic, earnest songs and reinterpretations that result?

    Today, a few choice covers from the surprisingly vast spectrum of David Bowie songs performed by folk musicians. Play ‘em in public to watch two generation of cool kids smile as the songs in their heads come back to life, stripped down and stretched out, in spades, in style, and in beauty.

    • Dar Williams, Starman
      This Bowie-esque popfolk cover from urban folk goddess Dar Williams was produced and distributed via Dar Williams’ fanbase; they own her albums, and so should you.

    • The Gourds, Ziggy Stardust
      Alt-country bluegrass boys The Gourds bring their signature hoot and holler, swagger and twang to this cover, originally recorded for a March 2003 CD insert in Uncut magazine and now available on french-produced Bowie coveralbum Bowiemania.

    • M. Ward, Let’s Dance
      Though I usually prefer the stripped down nature of in-studio covers, the slow atmospheric layers of this produced version, off Transfiguration of Vincent, really set off M. Ward‘s rough-hewn vocal style.

    • Natalie Merchant, Space Oddity
      A dreamy post-pop tour de force from the cusp of her turn towards alt-folk, though the bass and electric guitar slide into the chorus are a blast from the past. Live, from New York, it’s Natalie Merchant.

    • Alejandro Escovedo, The Man Who Sold The Earth
      Alejandro Escovedo‘s live roots-rock recording is admittedly rough around the edges. But like all his recorded work, it’s got a rhythmic playfulness and energy out the wazoo.

    • Anna Ternheim, China Girl
    • The Last Town Chorus, Modern Love
      Indiefolk darlings Anna Ternheim and Megan Hickey’s alter-ego The Last Town Chorus make surprisingly similar production choices on two very different originals, create sultry, rich environments that bring the lyrics out.

    • Danny Michel, Young Americans
      A slowbuild backporch slackstring folk-blues; the storysong of an American awakening. My absolute favorite Bowie cover. Ladies and Gentlemen, Danny Michel, from Loving The Alien.

    As always, all performer and purchase links go to the artist’s preferred source for music purchase wherever possible. Buy music, spread the word: support the artists you love, so the next generation might cover them in turn.

    Today’s bonus coversongs need no introduction:

    • M. Ward’s live in-studio Let’s Dance
    • The Gourds do Gin ‘n Juice (orig. Snoop Dogg)

    873 comments » | Alejandro Escovedo, Anna Ternheim, Covered in Folk, Danny Michel, Dar Williams, David Bowie, M. Ward, Natalie Merchant, The Gourds, The Last Town Chorus