Cover Lay Down

Written last night in a rainstorm’s aftermath. Posted this morning in bright dappled sunlight.

They say April showers bring May flowers, but I’m not so sure. This evening’s thunderstorm was a big one, and in our end-of-the-wire rural existence, even when the power stays on, thunder knocks our ‘net connectivity for a loop. Meanwhile, now that the trees have finally filled in, our newly-terraformed backyard doesn’t seem to be getting more than a few hours of sun each day; as a consequence, we’re having trouble getting flowers to do much of anything back there.

I’ve got dozens of posts half-formed and half-written, in my mind and on the screen: new and beloved artists to feature, a long-overdue return to our Covered In Kidfolk series, a few great songwriters to rediscover through folk covers. But writing this with a waning battery and no ‘net access means being shut off from my usual research materials. And in the darkness, the sounds of rain pattering against the leaves, punctuated by the intermittent gutterball of thunder, are sweeter than any music I could play – so sweet, it’s hard to think about anything but the world outside.

Instead, I spent the last hour watching the flowerbeds all but wash away, and the muddy water wash the fill from between the flagstones. The rain against the windows turned the yard beyond into an everchanging pointilist dream. And I lost the thread of anything but the present.

Some rainstorms disrupt; some destroy; others help things grow. All involve chaos, in their own way; even if it is only because rain challenges our default image of the world outside as inherently sunny and easily navigable. Here’s a playlist compiled quickly, in the dark, and researched only afterwards: a set of coversong, from the usual wide variety of folk artists and singer-songwriters, that celebrates storms both real and metaphoric.

• Grant Lee Phillips, So. Central Rain
  (orig. R.E.M.)

  I’ve always liked this song –- the way the the storm gets entangled with the emotional distance in the lyric, the repeated cry of I’m sorry that serves as the chorus — but the original comes off like a maudlin torch song in my ears. On his 2006 cover album nineteeneighties Grant Lee Phillips plays the song out straight, holding his emotion in check, letting the way the words trail off reveal the true heart of the damaged, emotionally tongue-tied narrator. The song is transformed.

• Cassandra Wilson, I Can’t Stand The Rain
  (orig. Ann Peebles)

  Despite her powerful interpretive voice, Cassandra Wilson is usually billed as smooth late night Jazz. But this song is something sparse and jangled from the eye of a storm: tense, frenetic blues from a single slide guitar, a tapping foot like rain on the roof, Wilson’s alto floating above it all like a howl of wind. From the surprisingly good collection The Best Smooth Jazz…Ever.

• Neko Case, Buckets of Rain
• Jimmy LaFave, Buckets of Rain
• Beth Orton and M. Ward, Buckets of Rain
  (orig. Bob Dylan)

  I posted Redbird’s excellent version of this song at the bottom of a post on Grateful Dead rainsongs a while back. Of the three versions here, Jimmy LaFave‘s is loose bar-room folkrock americana, with a bit of dustbowl mixed in; Orton and Ward are lo-fi and spare, like a living room cover; Neko Case is sweetest, and oh so perfectly countrified.

• Joan Baez, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
• Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
  (orig. Bob Dylan)

  More Dylan. A very young Joan Baez released this surprisingly tender version of his condemnation of society and its lack of commitment to social justice in 1965 on her Dylan tribute album Farewell, Angelina. Almost forty years later, Edie and the boys bang it out like a poprock anthem.

• Northern Lights w/ Vassar Clements, Rainmaker
  (trad.)

  Newgrass pioneers Northern Lights worked with master fiddler Vassar Clements on and off for over a decade; I especially like their 2000 live album Three August Nights. This high-energy live cut is a five minute bluegrass festival, the perfect jam for a sunny summer afternoon.

• Nanci Griffith, Coming Down in the Rain
  (orig. Buddy Mondlock)

  Mandolin and piano, robust harmonies in little-girl voices, and a story of love lost to the sky make this one of the strongest cuts on Nanci Griffith’s excellent cover album Other Voices, Other Rooms.

• Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem, I Get The Blues When It Rains
  (multiple artists)

  Previously featured artists Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem turn this over-covered 1929 country and blues chestnut into a cheerful stroll of a song, a tight gem of acoustic folk swing music with a little sultry swagger built right in. From Cocktail Swing, which is all like that.

• Juju Stulbach, Have You Ever Seen The Rain
  (orig. Creedence Clearwater Revival)

  Played as a tender, ragged waltz, a Creedence classic becomes pensive and atmospheric. This bright psychadelic indiefolk from newcomer Juju Stulbach, the Brazilian frontwoman of NYC band Mosquitos, keeps growing on me. Bonus points: it’s the soundtrack to this subject-appropriate commercial for GE.

• Petty Booka, Singin’ In The Rain
  (orig. Gene Kelly)

  This lighthearted romp with double-uke and doubled girlvoices from Japanese duo Petty Booka is bright like a rainbow at storm’s end. Because, in the end, what better way to meet chaos than to smile and dance within it?

Previously on Cover Lay Down:

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.

There 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.

• Petty Booka, Teacher’s Pet (orig. Doris Day)
  (from Ukelele Lady; more Petty Booka here)

• Matt Nathanson, Starfish and Coffee (orig. Prince)
  (from For The Kids, Too; more Matt Nathanson here)
• Fionn Regan, Getting Better (orig. Beatles)
  (live on BBC Radio 1; more Fionn Regan here)
• Mark Erelli, Lonestar (orig. Lori McKenna)
  (Mp3 of the Month web release; more Mark Erelli here)
• David Wilcox, The Kid (orig. Buddy Mondlock)
  (from How Did You Find Me Here; more David Wilcox here)
• Cry Cry Cry, The Kid (ibid.)
  (from Cry Cry Cry; more here here here)
• Bree Sharp, We’re Going To Be Friends (orig. White Stripes)
  (website release; more Bree Sharp here)
• Jack Johnson, We’re Going To Be Friends (ibid.)
  (from the Curious George soundtrack; more Jack Johnson here)
• Art Garfunkel w/ Paul Simon and James Taylor, (What A) Wonderful World (orig. Sam Cooke)
  (from Watermark; more Art Garfunkel here)
• Luther Wright and the Wrongs, Another Brick in the Wall (orig. Pink Floyd)
  (from Rebuild the Wall; more Luther Wright here)

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