Why Do I Love Hank? Country coverfolk with today's guest host: Paul

My name is Paul and I usually blog over at Setting The Woods On Fire. Boyhowdy has been kind enough to let me say a few words here while he enjoys a vacation. As you might have guessed from the title of my blog, I’m a big fan of Hank Williams. I also love cover songs.

Cover songs are fun because they help you separate the song from the performance. Do I love Hank because of the songs he wrote and poularized? Or do I love Hank because of the way he performed them? I’m sure it’s a bit of both, but listening to covers of Hank is a good way to understand what makes Hank's records so special.

Except for the Dylan tune, the tracks featured here are new to me. Boyhowdy thought it might be interesting to see how a Hank fan would respond to folky covers of Hank’s work. Some I liked a lot. Some not so much.

I’ll start with Cold Cold Heart by Norah Jones. This one should generate lots of interest, as it’s one of Hank’s best compositions performed by popular singer. While Norah undoubtedly has a great voice, I’m not sold. I hear it more as a musical exercise than as an emotional plea from a frustrated lover. Lesson: I love Hank because he really sells a song.

Norah Jones, Cold Cold Heart (H. Williams)
(from Come Away With Me)

Since I wasn’t so nice with the first one, let’s move on to my favorite song in this batch of Hank covers, a brilliant medley of Wedding Bells and Let’s Turn Back The Years performed by John Prine and Lucinda Williams. I love everything about this recording. Hank did not write Wedding Bells but it sounds just like something he could have written, which is shown by how seemlessly this “medley” fits together. John and Lucinda do a nice job selling the song without over-singing. Not surprising, considering their talents. (Of course, it might just be the peddle steel guitar that so warms my country-loving heart on this piece.)

John Prine & Lucinda Williams, Wedding Bells/Let’s Turn Back The Years (C. Boone/H. Williams)
(from In Spite of Ourselves)

Speaking of over-singing, here’s a rendition of Long Gone Lonesome Blues that’s just a bit too overdone for my taste. Yodeling is OK (in small doses). Quavery yodeling is pushing it.

Red Molly, Long Gone Lonesome Blues (H. Williams)
(from Never Been To Vegas)

Over-singing isn’t always bad, though. I'm not exactly sure why, but Mark Erelli’s spirited version of The Devil’s Train works well despite the singer's affected “twang”:

Mark Erelli, The Devil’s Train (H. Williams)
(from The Memorial Hall Recordings)

Another one from Boyhowdy’s batch that I really liked was I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive by Greg Brown. It’s kind of a goofy song (“I was living high until the fatal day a lawyer proved I wasn’t born, I was only hatched”), and it’s a Hank Williams' signature tune, so it's not an easy assignment for a cover artist. But Brown pulls it off with aplomb by playing it straight. Just like Hank, I believe Brown’s exaggerated tale of woe.

Greg Brown, I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive (F. Rose/H. Williams)
(from Friend of Mine)

Only one of Boyhowdy's batch of folky Hank covers really bothered me, and this is it. The descending harmony party is cloying. And the re-written lyric about the “gay” dog just does not belong in a Hank Williams song (not that there’s anything wrong with gay dogs). Score one point for Hank's performance trumping his songs.

Devon Sproule & Paul Curreri, Why Don’t You Love Me? (H. Williams)
(from Valentines Day Duets #3, 2006)

Let’s close this post with a Hank song performed by one of the few artists that I would place on an equally high pedestal, Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan, (I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle (H. Williams/J. Davis)
(outtake from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan)

I hope you enjoy these tunes. If I’m wrong about my criticism of any of the few I didn’t like, please let me know. It’s just one Hank fan’s opinion.

Oh yeah, my conclusion from listening to these covers is that I like Hank's songs, but I love the way he sings them.

Prolific blogger and tastemaster Paul pays regular tribute to country, rock, bluegrass, and jazz over at Setting The Woods On Fire. He is also a founding member of collaborative music blog Star Maker Machine.

Carolina Coverfolk, Volume 1: Songs of the South (Red Molly, Steve Forbert, Cris Williamson, Mike Seeger)

It's school vacation, and we really needed a change of scene. So we headed down south to North Carolina's Outer Banks, just me, the wife and kids, and a whole host of other relatives from both sides of the gene pool: my father, my wife's parents, siblings on both sides, even a few great-aunts and grandparent-in-laws. None of us live here, but it's as good a neutral midpoint as any; we've rented two houses down the street from each other just to fit everyone comfortably, and the trip promises to be memorable no matter what transpires.

So far, other than a long overnight drive down the coast, a quick dip of the toes in the ocean, a wonderful barbecue breakfast and a late-night hamburger cook-out, we've done little besides meet, greet, and settle in. Plans from here include a moment of awe on the beach where the Wright brothers made aviation history, as much rest and relaxation as possible, plenty of late night hot-tubbing and game room pool-playing, and a rare opportunity to spend some time with the wife sans kids.

But I'm also keeping my eyes open, trying to soak in as much of the culture and folkways as I can. I've driven through North Carolina before on my way north from Florida, and I have vague memories of a very short middle school chorus trip to the Winston-Salem area involving long rehearsals and a midnight sneak-out to a waffle house. But though I was born in Georgia, we moved before my first birthday; I've lived North of Connecticut all my conscious life. I've read plenty, and I know on paper the ways and means of the Southern experience, but other than this hazy history, and a few New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festival exceptions, I'm a newbie when it comes to experiencing the American South.

Still, as regular readers know, I'm a sucker for an excuse to delve deeply into subgenre and theme. So, in honor of the locale, this week will mark our first location-specific set of posts. Wednesday we'll feature some coverwork of and from homegrown old-school tradfolk luminaries Elizabeth Cotten, Doc Watson, and Earl Scruggs; later, as we look towards home again, we'll feature covers of the songs of James Taylor, an artist who was born in North Carolina, but now spends his days up north in Massachusetts, not so far from where we call home. And today, to kick things off, we present some coversongs which celebrate the Carolinas -- a short set heavy on the appalachian instrumentation and southern sound.

• Red Molly, Oh My Sweet Carolina (orig. Ryan Adams)
  Previously-featured sweet-voiced femme folk trio Red Molly covers this bittersweet tribute from North Carolina native son Ryan Adams with dobro, guitar, and harmony on their sole full-length album, the live Never Been To Vegas.
  
  
• Mud Acres, Carolina in My Mind (orig. James Taylor)
  Another song by a native son, this one reinvented as a ragged hootenanny by Happy Traum, banjoist Bill Keith, bass player Roly Salley (who penned the oft-covered Killin' The Blues) and others from the mid-seventies Woodstock, NY Mud Acres music collective.
  
  
• Cris Williamson and Tret Fure, Carolina Pines (orig. Kate Wolf)
  A languid, mournful country ballad of loss and emptiness from Treasures Left Behind: Remembering Kate Wolf. One of Kate's best, and the harmonica and slide on this powerful cut from Cris Williamson and Tret Fure make it that much better.
  
  
• Mike Seeger and Paul Brown, Way Down in North Carolina (trad.)
  The title cut from Way Down in North Carolina, lovingly gathered and performed by collector of traditional song Mike Seeger and pal Paul Brown, is a fiddle tune at heart, true appalachian music from the old school. Timeless, true, and perfect for the back porch or the back country.
  
  
• Steve Forbert, My Carolina Sunshine Girl (orig. Jimmie Rodgers)
  Singer-songwriter Steve Forbert swings this short but sweet old tune with a wry touch and his signature vocal strangle. Off Any Old Time, Forbert's tribute to Jimmie Rodgers, king of the cowboy yodel.

Covered In Folk: Gillian Welch (Glen Phillips, Ryan Adams, Alison Krauss, Crooked Still)

Hope no one minds an early "Sunday" post this week; my brother and his wife are on their way in from Brooklyn for the long weekend, and I don't get to see them as often as I'd like. I'll have a short post up for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, if I can; in the meantime, enjoy today's feature on "American Primitive" folkartist Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings, the tenth post in our popular Covered in Folk series, where we pay tribute to the songwriting talents of a single artist.

I saw Gillian Welch at the Green River Festival a while back, and it was a revelation. From ten rows back, her summer dress blowing in the hot breeze, her twanged voice, the doubled guitars, her narratives of Southern poverty and pain, all conspired to bring the hot scent of jasmine and Southern dust on the breeze even as we lounged on the New England grass. The crowd swelled. The rest of the afternoon passed in a haze.

Though it was her vocal talents in O Brother, Where Art Thou which put her on a mass-marketable par with Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris, it was clear to anyone watching that, as a musical phenomenon, Gillian Welch was a force to be reckoned with in the growing americana folk movement.

More often than not, Gillian Welch is the performing name for two musicians, Welch herself and her ubiquitous partner David Rawlings; when they work with others each gets billing, but in performance as a duo, the pronoun "she" is the standard convention. Welch appears as frontwoman, and can certainly stand her own as a powerful force in a particular subgenre of american folk music, but they share writing credit on many songs, and their harmonies -- vocal and guitar -- are notable and recognizable.

And what is the Gillian Welch sound? Welch's voice is well-suited for the raw, backporch paces she puts it through; together, as songwriters and performers, these two musicians build on this vocal base to create an americana sound Welch calls "American Primitive", something simultanously sparer and more richly nuanced than anything a solo artist could do with guitar or voice. Call it old-timey folk -- unproduced and jangly, sparse and stripped down from the more traditional old-timey sound of groups like Old Crow Medicine Show, Welch and Rawlings' musical compatriots and touring partners.

There are times when Gillian Welch sounds like an old Alan Lomax field recording, something timeless, raw and elegant in its simplicity and honest rough presentation. The lyrics, too, tend towards the trope and narrative themes -- rural life, loss and hardship -- of early American southern field folk. Given all that, it's no wonder that over the last decade or so, since even before the release of debut album Revival in 1996, the folk end of the americana movement has begun to pick up her songs and give them the traditional treatment.

Today, some select covers from the increasingly vast spectrum of sound that pays tribute to this weathered, shy, still-young matriarch of the new americana folk set. Interesting, how many retain the original Welch/Rawlings close harmonies, as if the tenor echo were as much a part of the original text to be covered as the powerful words, melody, and chord. Perhaps it is.

• Crooked Still, Orphan Girl
  
• Emmylou Harris, Orphan Girl
  
• Dakota Blonde, Orphan Girl
  Crooked Still hops with cello, banjo and bass; Emmylou Harris fills out the sound in her inimitable style; newcomers Dakota Blonde mourn a life alone with accordian and guitar and drumthunder. The infinite possibility of nuance and power keeps this oft-covered, well-worn tune fresh, despite its weary lyric.
  
  
• Ryan Adams, Revelator
  
• Glen Phillips, Revelator
  Two electrified covers which take this heavy tune to its natural folk rock conclusion. Alt-country rocker Ryan Adams' shortened version, off the Destroyer Sessions, is full-on Neil Young, guitars and vocals tangled up in angst. Singer-songwriter and ex-Toad the Wet Sprocket frontman Glen Phillips' version is darker, more pensive, more beautiful.
  
  
• Peter Mulvey, Caleb Meyer
  
• Red Molly, Caleb Meyer
  At first listen, Peter Mulvey's classically-fingerpicked version teeters on the overly maudlin, and previously-posted girlgroup Red Molly's three-voiced approach seems to cost them emotive potential. But listen again -- these grow on you.
  
  
• Alison Krauss & Union Station, New Favorite
  Fellow Gillian Welch O Brother, Where Are Thou muse Alison Krauss and her star-studded band Union Station make a sweet live bluegrass ballad of an old-timey wallflower's love song.
  
  
• Elizabeth Mitchell, Winter's Come and Gone
  Kidfolk queen Elizabeth Mitchell brings us a light-hearted tale well-suited for the bedtime ears of the next generation of traditional folk fans.
  
  
• Elan Mehler Quartet, Elvis Presley Blues
  This sultry gospel-jazz take from the Elan Mehler Quartet is sweet with breathy sax and slow-rolling piano. It isn't folk, but it makes the perfect capstone to any set of Gillian Welch covers.

Don't forget to click on artist names above to purchase the best of the modern folk world from bluegrass to bluesfolk direct from the source. And, if you don't already have them, buy Gillian Welch's four incredible albums direct from her website.


Today's bonus coversongs hold back a bit, that we might eventually bring you a full post of Gillian Welch covering other artists. But here's two collaborative efforts that give Rawlings and Welch their own billing, to tide you over until then:

• Gillian Welch and David Rawlings join The Chieftains for traditional song Katie Dear
  
• Robyn Hitchcock, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings cover Dylan's Tryin' To Get To Heaven Before They Close The Door

Red Molly: Never Been To Vegas (Gillian Welch, Susan Werner, Elvis and more)

Though I spend plenty of time at the foot of the stage, I don't usually care much for live recordings: I prefer the perfection of the studio to the roar of the imaginary crowd, and poor sound quality bothers my ears. But every once in a while, when there's a good engineer at the sound board, something truly special results. Such is the case with Red Molly's strong first full-length album Never Been To Vegas -- which, when added to their four-song in-studio EP, is the sum total of their recordings.

And, with the exception of a few previously-sung notables by Red Molly dobro player Abbie Gardner, every single song on these albums is a coversong.

The three folksingers that comprise Red Molly -- Gardner, bass player/mandolinist Carolann Solobelo, and banjo/guitarist Laurie MacAllister -- met around covers, so it's no surprise that their entire recorded output consists of them. Formed from the early morning remnants of a latenight songcircle high above the darkened mainstage of Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, the trio returned to the festival two years later to win the highly-competitive FRFF Emerging Artist showcase. (Full disclosure: I'm crew chief for the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival teen crew).

Since then, the girls of Red Molly have toured with the other 2006 showcase winners, opened for such luminaries as Jonathan Edwards and John Hammond, and come back to Falcon Ridge as featured performers, wowing crowds and winning admiration from fellow musicians with their sweet harmonies and full acoustic sound. Throughout, they've been playing covers -- banking admiration for such time as they might return to either their own solo work, or a fuller existence as the rarest of American folk creatures: the folk group.

Mostly, Red Molly's interpretations lean towards the Americana end of folk music -- coverchoices include Gillian Welch, Hank Williams, and old traditional folk/gospel songs such as Darlin' Corey and When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder. But regardless of subject, their tight crystal-clear harmonies and brightstringed musicianship bring each song forward as a gift to be shared, a glittering gospel.

Today we feature a trio of songs from the folktrio's Never Been To Vegas, with kudos to engineer Dae Bennett for changing my mind about live recordings, even if this one turns out to have been recorded in a studio, not a coffeehouse. Don't forget to check out the bonus songs below for a sweet pair of covers from their self-titled EP, and a wonderful version of You Gotta Move by Abbie and fellow 2006 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Showcase winner Pat Wictor.

• Red Molly, Caleb Meyer (orig. Gillian Welch)
  
• Red Molly, Coal Tattoo (orig. Billy Edd Wheeler)
  
• Red Molly, Blue Night (orig. Kirk McGee)
  

Support these fast-rising, red-wearin' women by buying Red Molly, plus solo albums from Abbie, Laurie, and Carolann, from CD Baby via the Red Molly website. While you're there, follow the link to pick up this year's Naked Folk Calendar (the girls of Red Molly were the November 2006 pin-up); all calendar profits go towards health insurance for struggling folk musicians.


Today's bonus coversongs:

• Red Molly wrings new life from old Elvis-covered chestnut Are You Lonesome Tonight...
  
• ...and jams through Susan Werner's Yellow House
  
• Abbie Gardner and Pat Wictor wail the doublesteel blues on You Gotta Move (orig. Mississippi Fred McDowell)
  
• Previously posted: Red Molly covers Patty Griffin

Covered in Folk: The Dixie Chicks do Patty Griffin

You may not have heard of Patty Griffin. But if you've had your ear to the radio over the past decade, you've heard her songwriting: Griffin is one of those rare singer-songwriters whose songs are bigger than she is, and in her case, it's a shame and a blessing. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the bittersweet lot of the oft-covered and not-yet-famous. We call it Covered in Folk.




According to legend, the production on Patty Griffin's first album obscured her authentic sound so much that her label buried the studio tracks, remastered her demo, and released it pretty much as-is. The result, 1996 release Living With Ghosts, is a comprehensive masterpiece of raw folk power. The siren sounds of the city through her open apartment window only reinforce the realism inherent in the languid grit of her hard-driving guitar, and her hallmark seen-it-all wail.

But we're not here today to talk about Patty's breathy voice, or her rough, busker's streetcorner sound. We're here to talk about her songs.

Those who have seen Patty in concert agree: there's nothing quite like the powerhouse Maine woods twang-and-wail to lay bare the bones of her earlier, darker lyrics of battered women and lost rural souls. But I'd rather have her songs channeled through other voices than let them languish in the A&M; vault. And luckily, Griffin's songs are so powerful as written, it's a genuine joy to hear them handled well by others.

No performer in today's market has benefitted more from Griffin's songwriting than country sensations and anti-Bush badgirls the Dixie Chicks, whose three-part harmony and careful handling make the songs their own while retaining all the original power of lyric and melody. Today we offer three Patty Griffin covers, one from each of three different Chicks albums.

• Let Him Fly, off Dixie Chicks Fly
  
• Truth No. 2, off the Dixie Chicks Home
  
• Top Of The World, off the Dixie Chicks live album of the same name

The Dixie Chicks are great musicians in their own right, but now that you know the pen behind the music, put your credit where credit is due: pick up Patty Griffin's Living with Ghosts, her stellar opus of smalltown loners 1000 Kisses, and the rest of the Griffin catalog at ecotunes, her preferred sales source.


Today's bonus coversong bonanza:

• New folkfemme combo Red Molly covers Griffin's Long Ride Home
  
• Alt-countrified Emmylou Harris covers Griffin's One Big Love
  
• Covergirl chanteuse Maura O'Connell covers Griffins Poor Man's House
  
• Patty Griffin covers Springsteen's Stolen Car
  
• Patty Griffin covers John Hiatt's Take It Down