Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Mary Lou Lord Covers:
Daniel Johnston, The Magnetic Fields, Big Star, Van Halen, and more!

A resurrected post today, while I write finals for my graduating seniors and wrestle with something of significance for the weekend. The following feature was originally posted Feb. 23, 2008; it was subsequently removed by blogger.





As far as I can tell, the only major distinction between modern folk and a certain sort of indie music seems to be how the artists choose to produce and use instruments on their songs. And though you won’t find this sort of fuzzed-out guitar on the other folkblogs, the way the modern singer-songwriter mentality seems to find voice in both indierock and folk fascinates me.

But production isn’t what makes folk, and even if it were, the distinction is often fluid. The small but growing cadre of indie artists who perform in both folk and alt-rock modes owe no small debt to a select group of artists — Evan Dando, Lou Barlow, Tanya Donelly, Jeff Tweedy, Ben Gibbard and others — who have, over the years, moved easily across the bridge between the two forms. But these artists, in turn, owe the very existence of that bridge to other, lesser-known forerunners, like Elliott Smith and Daniel Johnston, who spent their entire careers building the bridge for them to cross.

As part of our ongoing exploration of this curious relationship, today we feature one underappreciated artist who is more often found among the indierock, but who has claimed folk credibility from the start: Mary Lou Lord, folksinger and cover artist.


I was a high school student in Boston during Mary Lou Lord’s busker days, and not an apt or dilligent pupil; I often skipped class to head off down the T into Harvard Square with friends. Given our relative age, then, and her own preference for playing along the Red Line, I suppose I must have passed by Lord a couple of times. But back then, my ears were full of post-punk grunge, and she was just another streetcorner kid with an acoustic guitar, a ragged approach, and an innocent, little-girl voice. By the time she started recording alongside the best of the growing post-punk world, I had already moved on.

The heavy fuzz and feedback of much of her production puts the bulk of Mary Lou Lord’s recorded work squarely in line with early nineties alt-rock; if you’re looking for her in your local indie record store, you’ll find it alongside the pre-grunge of artists like The Lemonheads and Juliana Hatfield. But like Beck, Lord has always had a folk heart, and worn it proudly. Though she’s famous for her catfights with Courtney Love, she toured and recorded with Elliott Smith, and opened for Cover Lay Down fave Shawn Colvin. By identifying herself with those artists and others, Lord categorizes herself as an artist straddling the bridge between singer-songwriter folk and the indie world.

The songs that Lord has chosen to cover over her two-decade career speak volumes about which artists she considers her musical peers and forefathers, and here, too, we find a curious connection with the folkworld. In and among the Magnetic Fields and Big Star covers, we find covers of Smith and Colvin, indiefolkie Daniel Johnston, Lucinda Williams, Richard Thompson, and even oldschool pre-folkie Elizabeth Cotten. Clearly, this is a woman who listens to folk music on her own time, recognizes good songwriting regardless of original instrumentation, and takes them where she can find them.

Here’s a few of my favorite Mary Lou Lord coversongs which hit that spectrum, and then some. Most are solo acoustic, delicate and coy, but don’t be scared by the occasional guitarfuzz; this is, at heart, a form of folk. Heck, if feedback was all it took, Dylan wouldn’t be a folkie anymore, either.



Officially, Mary Lou Lord stopped performing and recording in 2005 when she was diagnosed with a rare vocal cord affliction, though an appearance at SXSW 2006 suggested she’s still open to possibility. Her recorded output was scattered across several indie labels, some short-lived, but some of her back catalog is still available, and it’s chock full of folk covers.

Folk fans are probably best served by starting with Live City Sounds, a hard-to-come-by acoustic album with several Richard Thompson covers which sounds like the streets where I once passed Mary Lou Lord. Alt-punk label Kill Rock Stars also still carries an EP and a couple of compilations; the EP is a split bill with someone else, but it’s got a great rockabilly cover of a Lucinda Williams tune that’s well worth the cost. Her myspace page also has a few downloads, including I Figured it Out, a tune she wrote and recorded with Elliott Smith.

What, more? Okay, here’s a couple more Big Star coversongs in the same grungefolk vein. Dando’s cover is one of my favorite coversongs ever, hands down. And doesn’t Mary Lou Lord sound like a female version of Elliott Smith?



Thanks for humoring me, folks. We’ll return with a brand new coverfolk feature on Sunday.

Category: Uncategorized

8 Responses to “Mary Lou Lord Covers:
Daniel Johnston, The Magnetic Fields, Big Star, Van Halen, and more!”

  1. ro
    May 27th, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    Dang! While the MLL covers are awesome, I was hoping for her take on Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” I heard it once (years ago), and have looked for it since. Thanks for listening.
  2. Maine Character
    May 27th, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    I was at Park Street Station one afternoon in 1988, waiting with a friend for his father to get off the train, and across the tracks a girl was singing “The Heart of Saturday Night.” I was totally caught up in it, but just then my friend’s father arrived, and he literally had to take my arm and pull me away.

    Just as we were going up the stairs, though, she finished the song and said, “That was Tom Waits.” I’d heard of Waits before, but it was that chance song that made me seek out his albums.

    Years later I saw a picture of Mary Lou Lord and realized it was her. Wish I hadn’t been on the wrong side of the tracks, or I would’ve talked to her.
  3. Katie
    May 27th, 2009 at 5:38 pm

    Thanks so much for reposting this - these are just pure gems :)
  4. Mary Lou Lord Covers Pink Floyd “Fearless”…Plus Others « Rock God Cred
    May 28th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

    [...] Click here to go to CLD to check Mary Lou Lord covering Pink Floyd’s “Fearless”, plus her cover of Van Halen’s “Jump”, Big Star’s “Thirteen”…and more. [...]
  5. Marchbanks
    June 2nd, 2009 at 6:15 pm

    Spasmodic dysphonia? It seems to be less rare than one might think; right offhand I can think of four people I know, or have known, personally who have the condition. Two of ‘em were radio DJs, and you can imagine the kind of havoc THAT plays with a career! I understand that SD’s being treated symptomatically with Botox injections with some success–’tain’t a cure, but it makes the spasms more manageable.
  6. nazz nomad
    June 23rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    thanks for the floyd and big star covers- chills!
  7. Maria
    June 23rd, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    Pretty cool post. I just stumbled upon your site and wanted to say
    that I have really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case
    I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you write again soon!
  8. Kevin Spiess
    August 14th, 2009 at 5:28 pm

    Wow you rock Mary Lou. Specifically that Pink Floyd cover: oh so nice, superstar.

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