Cover Lay Down

It’s always tempting to treat the first post of a new year as more significant than it really needs to be. The turning of the calendar, the fireworks at the moment of truth: all that ritual creates a mandate, a weight of liminality that demands deliberation.

I’ve got some strong candidates for upcoming features - there’s a wealth of new coverfolk coming down the pike, and a new sense of appreciation rising for some singer-songwriters we’ve yet to cover here in our virtual pages. But I’d be a fool to ignore the inner voice, nor the opportunity to recenter our mission. Today, we start the new year with a return to our roots, focusing on those folksingers who lie at the heart of the folk experience for me.

We aim for diversity here at Cover Lay Down, and I think we’ve done well in that vein, pushing the boundaries of folk music even as we explore their iterations. But the experience of music is a subjective process, and one of its greatest delights is that we all have our own ears, our own needs to be fulfilled through that sonic landscape and its poetic meaning we call song.

As such, in my heart, the center of modern folk music starts with my own awakenings. How could it be otherwise?

Today, we return to that core.

These aren’t my favorite covers, necessarily. Today is about the artists, more than any particular song. And these are the voices of those singer-songwriters and bands for which I would stop the world to make a show. Their records are my desert island discs, the voices I would listen to forever if I had no choice but to pick a few. Their placement on a folk festival stage frames my attendance.

Of course, our journey here at Cover Lay Down is about coverage, and never is this focus as problematic as when I celebrate artists whose work I love in toto. The covers I have chosen from their records and live bootlegs are those which most closely hew to their own work, and come off as their own. They are the best way I have to celebrate them through our particular lens.

Neither are these covers new to our pages. In many cases, in fact, because these artists are so special to me, I got to them first, before Cover Lay Down had more than a small handful of readers. These original features lie far in our past. The links are dead, their words buried in the archives. But for the way they clarify my world, they deserve our ongoing and repeated celebration.

Let this post be a regrounding, then - a resurrection, a recommitment to that which keeps me doing this, late into the night at the kitchen table while the world slumbers. For as much as I love all of you, and the community which has (to my grateful surprise) coalesced around this blog, in the end, as I noted just yesterday over at Star Maker Machine, I listen to music to commune with myself - to recapture those rare transcendent moments when the worlds outside and in are made complete through song.

Without these artists, there would be no “us”, no “me”. Without them, there would be no Cover Lay Down.

These are the voices that sing in the deepest recesses of my heart. I hope they sing to you, too.

• Patty Griffin: Stolen Car (orig. Bruce Springsteen)
  (from 1000 Kisses, 2002)

• Lucy Kaplansky: The Angels Rejoiced Last Night (orig. The Louvin Brothers)
  (from Every Single Day, 2001)

• Richard Shindell: Northbound 35 (orig. Jeffrey Foucault)
  (from South of Delia, 2007)

• Dar Williams: Family (orig. Pierce Pettis)
  (from Mortal City, 1996)

• Alison Krauss: Can’t Find My Way Home (orig. Blind Faith)
  (from the Crossing Jordan soundtrack, 2003; more Alison Krauss)

• Shawn Colvin: You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (orig. Bob Dylan)
  (from Cover Girl, 1994; more Shawn Colvin)

• William Fitzsimmons: You Can Close Your Eyes (orig. James Taylor)
  (from Before the Goldrush, 2008; more William Fitzsimmons)

• Iron & Wine: Love Vigilantes (orig. New Order)
  (from the iTunes Live Session EP, 2006; more Iron & Wine)

• Jeffrey Foucault: That’s The Way The World Goes ‘Round (orig. John Prine)
  (from Shoot The Moon Right Between The Eyes, 2008)

• Caroline Herring: Midnight on the Water (orig. Kate Wolf)
  (from Lantana, 2007)

• Crooked Still: Darling Corey (trad.)
  (from Hop High, 2004)

• Elizabeth Mitchell: You Are My Sunshine (pop. Jimmie Davis)
  (from You Are My Sunshine, 2003)

It’s coming on pledge drive time here at Cover Lay Down; if you like what you hear, and want to throw a few bucks our way to defray the high cost of file hosting and bandwidth, we won’t say no. But Cover Lay Down exists first and foremost to support the work of folk musicians and singer-songwriters. So click on links above to learn and listen more, and purchase tour tickets and CDs. Give these artists a chance to change your life, too.