Cover Lay Down

Momentum matters; I’m a stickler for a blogging schedule. Last summer, rather than let the blog go dark during my annual folkfest pilgrimage, I asked a few fellow Star Maker Machine contributors to cover for me. Even in the midst of our little “blogger problem“, when it became clear that posts would remain under siege until I found my own host, I missed but a week of Wednesdays and Sundays before we were able to start back up here; even then, it was a struggle to get back into the groove after the short hiatus.

Which is why last week, in a spate of concern about losing a week of posting to my continuing tinnitus, I asked a few of my favorite folkbloggers to donate “a fave coversong or two, and a short write-up to accompany it”. The plan was to collect coverfolk from bloggers I trust, on the likely chance that I could not blog as my best self for a while, and have it ready to share with you as a celebration of my blogging peers and influences. And today, since the ringing is pretty bad and I’m looking at a long week grading finals at term’s end, I’m pleased to announce that the first batch of roundtable contributions has arrived just in time — and that to a one, in both song choice and syntax, they are as stellar and diverse a set as I could have hoped for.

To keep things fair, and celebrate each fave folkblogger equally, I’ll be sharing these wonderful responses in the order they arrived in the inbox. Tonight, then, we’ll kick off the Coverfolk Roundtable with a wonderful and diverse set of folk covers from bloggers Victoria of Muruch, Kat of Keep the Coffee Coming, and The Duke of The Late Greats. Enjoy!





Victoria and I have somewhat of a mutual admiration society going on. I was flattered to be named one of her top five recommended reads just a few weeks ago; in turn, I’ve been increasingly impressed by her own work over at Muruch, from her perceptive, honest reviews of a wide range of media, including Mountain Stage folk, folkpop, and the occasional DVD or book, to her ability to describe and anticipate the ramifications of the continued influence of Google on our blogger lives so presciently.

It was Victoria’s suggestion, in fact, that led to this little roundtable project. And just because she’s folk like that, she sent along not one, but three lovely folk-hybrid tracks for our listening pleasure.

• Luminescent Orchestrii: She’s a Brick (orig. The Commodores)
  
  Victoria says: Luminescent Orchestrii are one of my favorite bands. Their music churns Romanian, Jewish, and Appalachian folk fiddle into a demented punk frenzy with the occasional pop and hum of a human beatbox. Their twisted and trippy instrumental cover of The Commodores’ “She’s a Brickhouse” was featured their debut album Too Hot To Sleep. What I love about their version is that accomplishes the two things that any great cover should: 1) it captures the spirit of the original, but 2) sounds fresh and original.
  

• Pianafiddle: Jazzy Für Elise (orig. Beethoven)
  
  Victoria says: Pianafiddle are a West Virginian duo who perform improvised instrumental mashups of songs from a variety of genres, including folk, jazz, blues, Celtic, bluegrass, and classical. Though their rendition of Beethoven’s “Für Elise” is indeed jazzy, the presence of the fiddle adds a definite folk element to the song. This cover is from their recent Or Something Like That! album, which was one of my favorites from 2008.
  

• Darby O’Gill & The Little People: Creep (orig. Radiohead)
  
  Victoria says: Darby O’Gill & The Little People are a psuedo Irish pub band who have recorded several Irish folk covers of popular songs. Their take on Radiohead’s “Creep” appeared on Traditional Irish Dance Music Vol. 1. Like all of the band’s tunes, the cover is fun, upbeat, and unexpected.
  

Duke needs little introduction; his long-standing blog The Late Greats is on all the best blogrolls. The man who introduced me to the importance of having regular features — after all, familiarity breeds content — tends toward the unapologetic and the pithy, choosing high posting volume over too much depth, preferring to let the music come to us with little more than a hook or two; that he has managed to keep this up for so long without sacrificing a consistently high quality continues to impress me. Here’s one of his favorites, which is also one of mine.

• Jonathan Coulton: Baby’s Got Back (orig. Sir Mixalot)
  
  Duke says: “Transmogrify: to change or alter greatly and often with grotesque or humorous effect” Webster nailed it in regards to Jonathan Coulton’s version of the Sir Mixalot classic “Baby’s Got Back”. Nothing better than taking a rap song and folking it out.

Kat’s blogging style is uniquely intimate: each day at Keep The Coffee Coming she shares a personal reflection tinged with memory, a black-and-white image of yesteryear, and a handful of thematically-related songs, chosen from what I swear is my father’s record collection raised to the Nth power. The songs are posted as separate entries, with little or no words to accompany them. The net result is like a soundtrack for a soul. It’s a hell of a powerful way to run a folkblog.

• Chris Smither: Cold Trail Blues (orig. Peter Case)
  
  Kat says: Chris Smither gives this Peter Case song a plaintive, desolate sound as he sings in a gruff whisper about a love lost, a trail gone cold. The song feels filled with longing. As for the music, Smither’s guitar work, his fingering, gives it the sound of a Mexican folk song. Anita Suhanin singing duet seems a bit lost behind Smither’s voice. The song comes from his 2006 release Leave the Light On.

Cover Lay Down publishes new features Wednesday, Sunday, and the occasional otherday.