Little Sparrow: A Cover Lay Down Mix
The sparrow: a symbol of fragility, and a semaphore for desperation and despair. In our case, though, the term is literal: the elderchild’s been rehabilitating one in a small cage in her room after finding it trapped in a coal grate in one of the coldest days of winter, its tailfeathers mostly missing, its mate picking at it in a vain attempt to startle it into freedom. It’s been there a month, and sometimes, I forget she has it.
But Saturday night, in a rare moment of hubris, she brought it downstairs to show our dinner guests, and suddenly, it sprang free. What followed was more reality television show than sitcom: two and a half hours of climbing up furniture and taking apart Ikea bookshelves, punctuated by frantic minutes chasing a tiny, terrified bird as it skimmed the ceiling from room to room, occasionally touching down on window dressings too high to reach, or diving into piles of boxes and wrapping paper, inviting us to uncover it time and again through intense intervention and careful disarray.
Eventually, we managed to chase it into the elderchild’s room, where the door could be closed, and the still-wobbly flier coaxed into its rehabilitative cage. And because we are who we are – easily exhausted, generally busy, prone to procrastination – today, the place remains a disaster: childhood photo albums piled high on the playroom daybed, the pantry undone, half the bookcase disassembled, pink screwdrivers and boxcutters scattered around it.
Our house is often messy. Our inner lives are, too. We are too easily goaded into self-celebration, and risk the sanctity of our service in the name of pride. But if this fragility is made of our own foibles, then we are wise to attend to it, indeed.
And so we turn to the songs of the sparrow. In the name of our children, and the fears we harbor within.
Little Sparrow: A Cover Lay Down Mix
- Betsy Landsteiner: Maybe Sparrow (orig. Neko Case) [2014]
- Murder By Death: Maybe Sparrow (orig. Neko Case) [2015]
- Audra Mae: Little Sparrow (orig. Dolly Parton) [2010]
- Devendra Banhart: Wake Up Little Sparrow (orig. Ella Jenkins) [2004]
- Leyla McCalla: Wake Up Little Sparrow (orig. Ella Jenkins) [2016]
- Lizz Wright: Wake Up Little Sparrow (orig. Ella Jenkins) [2005]
- Diane Taraz: The Sparrow (orig. Jack Hardy) [2009]
- Kemp and Eden: Sparrow (orig. Simon & Garfunkel) [2012]
- Lucas James: Sparrow (orig. Scattered Trees) [2012]
- Meagan Brauer and Alec James Milewski: I Don’t Feel It Anymore (Song of the Sparrow) (orig. William Fitzsimmons) [2011]
- Alathea: His Eye Is On The Sparrow (trad.) [2017]
- Abigail Washburn: His Eye Is On The Sparrow (trad.) [2006]
Always ad-free and artist-centric, Cover Lay Down has been digging deep at the ethnographic intersection of folkways and coversong since 2007 thanks to the support of artists, labels, promoters, and YOU. So do your part: listen, love, like, and above all, purchase the music, the better to keep it alive.
And if, in the end, you’ve got goodwill to spare, and want to help keep the music flowing? Please, consider a contribution to Cover Lay Down. All gifts go directly to bandwidth and server costs; all donors receive undying praise, and a special blogger-curated gift mixtape of over 50 well-loved but otherwise unshared covers from 2016-2017, including exclusive live covers from our very own Unity House Concert series.
Category: Mixtapes, William Fitzsimmons 2 comments »
January 24th, 2018 at 12:16 am
cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sparrow” by Kemp and Eden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plD-CWoVzr4
[Wonderful, thanks – I had been looking for a cover of this song! – boyhowdy]
February 4th, 2018 at 5:02 am
Not a cover but Laura Cantrell has a beautiful song off her last album called “Someday Sparrow”. Love your writing.