Oceanfolk: Covers for the end of summer
We’re in Truro for a short week, in a rented beachhouse high on the dunes above the Cape Cod sound. Wakeless trawlers and shore fishermen, beach wanderers and bathers are few and far between, mere specks on an otherwise natural landscape that fills the sense with color: green grasses, faded yellow sand, the variable blues of sky and water.
At night the lights of Provincetown shine brightly just on the edge of the vista, a line of stars marking the difference between pitch-black sea and an invisible sky. Last night a shooting star dropped towards them while I watched, as if longing to join the tourists and summer people in their shared debauchery. I stayed up late reading the usual borrowed beachhouse paperback, the autobiography of an island lobsterwoman, and fell asleep before eleven.
The weeks ahead burn and roil on the horizon like sunset: next week in Frankfurt and Berlin with my father and brother, and then back to work, with new students to greet, new courses to teach, and new classrooms to maintain from then until eternity. But sitting here on the deck in the shade of the house, the marsh below me, the ocean beyond, this browngrey hawk drawing lazy circles in the blue overhead, I am reminded how vital it is to sit in stillness at the edge of it all, how centering it is to squeeze peace from the last fleeting weeks of summer.
It’s a good life. Here’s a soundtrack for it.
- Richard Shindell: The Storms Are On The Ocean (orig. A.P. Carter)
(from South of Delia, 2007) - Ollabelle: The Storms Are On The Ocean (ibid.)
(from Ollabelle, 2004)
- Peter Mulvey: The Ocean (orig. Dar Williams)
(from Ten Thousand Mornings, 2002)
- Rose Polenzani: When The River Meets The Sea (orig. Paul Williams)
(live on WERS, 2007)
- Ann Percival: Tide and the River Rising (orig. Cindy Kallet)
(from The Sweetest Hours, 2005)
- Solas: The Maid On The Shore (trad.)
(from Celtic Tides, 1998)
- Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson: (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay (orig. Otis Redding)
(live on MOKB, 2009)
- Robert Skoro: Michael Row the Boat Ashore (trad.)
(from Down By The Riverside, 2006)
- Jonathan Rundman: Come Sail Away (orig. Styx)
(from Too Much Time On Our Hands: A Styx Tribute Album, 2003)
- Tim O’Brien: Sail Away (orig. Randy Newman)
(from Sail Away: The Songs of Randy Newman, 2006)
Cover Lay Down posts new coverfolk sets and commentary Sundays, Wednesdays, and the occasional otherday.
Category: Uncategorized
August 12th, 2009 at 3:15 am
Hola…desde Toledo (spain), felicitarte por esta mágnifica página. Me gustan mucho tus covers.
August 13th, 2009 at 7:01 am
[...] Click here to go to CLD to check Johnathan Rudman cover Styx “Come Sail Away”…and Tim O’Brien covers Randy Newman’s “Sail Away” [...]
August 13th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I grew up in Orleans on the Cape….great little sound track you made there.
August 13th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Thanks for including my version of “Come Sail Away” on your cool blog! I’ve linked to you from here:
http://jonathanrundman.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-version-of-styx-song-come-sail-away.html
August 13th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Nice tribute to the Cape - I remember it much the same. The shooting star you saw was part of the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks every year at this time. May you see it again in such perfect conditions.
August 15th, 2009 at 1:02 am
Love Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. But I didn’t care for this one.
December 1st, 2009 at 11:55 pm
[...] true fandom in such a creative way, and to fellow fan and subscriber Jonathan Rundman, whose Styx cover we featured earlier this year, for reminding me about the [...]
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[...] Rose Polenzani w/ Session Americana: When The River Meets The Sea (orig. Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas) (from When The River Meets The Sea, 2008; live in-studio version also available here) [...]