Cover Lay Down

Enough of the metaposts and navel gazing. As a triumphant return to normalcy here in our new home at Cover Lay Down, today we return to one of our favorite exploratory lenses: the covered songbook, as interpreted by a full set of artists from a wide swath of the folkworld who have been inspired by their contemporaries and musical forebears. Ladies and gentlemen: the songs of The Band.

Being of a certain middle age means having first experienced The Band in my most audio-graphically impressionable years, and in their best moment — on hiatus, after The Last Waltz, but before the guys reformed in the mid eighties without key player Robbie Robertson. It also means picturing those first few albums vividly, on already-worn vinyl, but not realizing until very recently the way in which The Band as a performing entity and songwriter’s collaborative sprung from their work as a back-up band, most significantly for Bob Dylan.

More visceral than critical, my childhood connection to the full set of raspy, ragged lead-and-harmony voices which the strong personalities of The Band traded among themselves doesn’t necessarily mean being able to tell the difference between a Danko composition and a Robertson-penned track. But that’s okay — there is, after all, such thing as a “typical” Band sound, or at least a range. And perhaps this consistency speaks to their popularity among folk fans, as much as it anticipates the strong tensions between strong and versatile musicians which would ultimately drive The Band apart.

In fact, the powerful, populist narrative songwriting which threaded through much of The Band’s most popular efforts alone (see, for example, this post from Star Maker Machine about Acadian Driftwood) would still be enough to explain why my father filed The Last Waltz near enough to Dylan, even though the countrified, occasionally bluesy rock and roll that typified their output in the late sixties and early seventies didn’t sound much like folk. And it certainly explains why, just as Joan Baez and other contemporaries mined the songs of The Band in the first years after their release, the songs of The Band continue to find their way into the performing repertoires of new generations of folk artists.

That said, as with so many oft-covered songbooks, many musicians and fans alike see The Band as underappreciated; Wikipedia, for example, suggests that The Band has had more critical recognition than popular success, and the predominantly indie crowd on the surprisingly consistent yet utterly unfolk recent covers album Endless Highway. But the continued relevance of the surviving members (see bonus section below) clearly rests as much on their cultural cachet as their musicianship. As an outsider, I’d suggest instead that The Band still gets plenty of play on classic radio, and what the DJs play will have its influence on the listening culture.

This, plus a penchant for richly detailed, highly melodic portrayals of the deep troubles of common men, makes them ripe for coverage. Here’s a few favorites, new finds and reposts alike, starting off with a favorite cover from Richard Shindell, the very first artist we featured on Cover Lay Down; the song was just as sweet this Sunday night, played live and solo and seen from the second row, as it was back then.

• Richard Shindell: Acadian Driftwood
  (faux-cadian folkrock from Richard Shindell cover album South of Delia)
• Denison Witmer: It Makes No Difference
  (majestic indiefolk filtered with subtlety and honor; from singer-songwriter Denison Witmer’s earlier covers project Recovered)
• Dar Williams: Whispering Pines
  (etherial atmospheric folk from Dar Williams, whisper-voiced earth mother of the folk circuit; off The Beauty of the Rain)
• Serena Ryder: This Wheel’s On Fire
  (gleeful, swinging folkpop from If Your Memory Serves You Well, last year’s oddly out-of-print full-length major label debut from still-rising Canadian indiefolkster Serena Ryder)
• Karen Dalton: In A Station
  (world-weary bluesfolk from Dylan contemporary and Band song subject Karen Dalton originally recorded for 1971 album In My Own Time)
• Joan Baez: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
  (classic balladfolk from another American folk institution, delivered in that distinctively robust-yet-sweet Joan Baez voice — an encore included on her mid-nineties Greatest Hits disk)
• Last Fair Deal: Up On Cripple Creek
  (lighthearted lo-fi bluegrass from american roots musicians Last Fair Deal, available freely from their coverladen website)
• Joan Osborne: The Weight
  (funkfolk from crossover sensation and recent jamband chanteuse Joan Osborne; via How Sweet It Is, which is chock full of rocking covers)
• Deanna Carter: The Weight
  (Pure shimmery popfolk replete with mandolin and backbeat; from Deanna Carter’s critically undersung 2007 release The Chain)
• The Jones Street Boys: Twilight
  (weary urban americana from Brooklyn bluegrass balladeers The Jones Street Boys, still on the turntable almost a year after we premiered their debut album Overcome.)
• Shawn Colvin: Twilight
  (girl-voiced femmefolk performed live by Shawn Colvin and subtly re-mastered for 1994 post-breakthrough album Cover Girl)

Band member Richard Manuel was lost just a few years after The Last Waltz to the ravages of time, touring, and a heavy addiction to Grand Marinier; Rick Danko died early, too, of a life worn thin by pill addiction. But like Dylan himself, the remaining original line-up remains closely connected o the music world. Robertson is reportedly working on a new album with Eric Clapton; fellow surviving member Garth Hudson does session work for Neko Case and Teddy Thompson. Meanwhile, after spending the nineties touring the jamband circuit, Levon Helm soldiers on in an americana/roots/old-timey vein, producing the next generation (including his daughter Amy, of neo-folk group Olabelle) and pushing the limits of authenticity in his own music.

Here’s Helm’s surprisingly Band-like cover of a Steve Earle favorite, off last year’s critically acclaimed ruralfolk album Dirt Farmer, plus an old Springsteen cover from the post-Manuel incarnation of The Band, complete with accordion and mandolin, which comes off as pretty acousto-rootsy. As always, if you like what you hear — here and above — hit up the links to purchase the music.

• Levon Helm: The Mountain (orig. Steve Earle)
  (from Dirt Farmer)
• The Band: Atlantic City (orig. Springsteen)
  (from Jericho)