Cover Lay Down

Our ongoing (Re)Covered series finds us touting new and newly uncovered releases from folk, roots, bluegrass and acoustic artists previously celebrated here on Cover Lay Down. Today, we delve into the mailbag with news and new coverage from raspy crooners Jeffrey Foucault and Peter Mulvey, sweet soul mama Carrie Elkin, a country rock-ified Stray Birds, whispery indiefolk pairing Matt Minigell and Annabelle Lord-Patey, and still-rising stringband Parsonsfield taking on Dylan, Paul Simon, Teenage Fanclub, the Episcopalian hymnal and more!

Peter Mulvey has been a mainstay of this blog since its birth, thanks to a fondness for coverage and a tendency to transform rather than merely channel the goods. But in the last several years, his commitment to the political reality that he shares with his fans has grown strong and evident in his practice – the man rides his bike cross-county on tour, and his protest song Take Down This Flag has been adopted, adapted, and added to by hundreds of performers.

New album Are You Listening?, produced by and on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe label and due to drop late in March, is a perfect exemplar of the man’s continued prowess as a chronicler of the raw and real. Preorder here, and while you wait for its release, check out Mulvey’s recent EP Lift Every Voice, a perfect, politically-relevant timepiece with the aforementioned anthem at the forefront, released free to all who promise to donate to the social justice cause of their choice.

• Peter Mulvey: Lift Every Voice (hymn) [2017]

I’ve been holding on to this for a while, and now I’m thrilled to share what well may be the best Paul Simon cover this decade will see: Carrie Elkin‘s haunting, resonant take on American Tune, which simply aches with the pain and hope of an America still yawing into the void. We last saw Elkin in our 2010 couples round-up; seven years later, she and Danny Schmidt have just become first-time parents. The song, a teaser from Elkin’s aching Kickstarter-driven solo album The Penny Collector, named after Elkin’s father, who recently passed, is expected to emerge on March 10, and it’s a stunning set; we’re sure you’ll want to donate now, and help the album come to full fruition as it deserves, on the strength of this little taste.

• Carrie Elkin: American Tune (orig. Paul Simon) [2017]

In a very real way, Boston-based singer-songwriter and busker Mary Lou Lord serves as a sort of muse to this blog; she’s recommended some wonderful music over the years since I first wrote about her in 2008. Last year, she played our house concert series, and brought along daughter Annabelle Lord-Patey as an opener, who revealed herself as an artist just finding her voice; now, paired with young singer-songwriter Matt Minigell, another Lord find who graced our 2015 Year’s Best mixtape, Annabelle seems to have come into her own, with a tender, rhythmic lo-fi take on Teenage Fanclub that doesn’t just bring me back to my own moody adolescence – it helps me celebrate and make my peace with it. Kudos to the next generation, and thanks, Mary Lou, for continuing to bring it forth into the world.

• Annabelle Lord-Patey and Matt Minigell: If I Never See You Again (orig. Teenage Fanclub) [2017]

Somewhere in the shuffle of the holiday season we missed an eleventh-hour Christmas three-fer from Parsonsfield (previously Poor Old Shine), recorded live in our hometown stomping grounds and sent as a free exclusive to all “inbox sessions” subscribers by the potent, barnburning old-timey-meets-The-Band fivesome from just down the road apiece, who we first fell in love with in the aisles of Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. I’ve always thought a certain Joni Mitchell setting deserved year-round consideration; here’s the boys to prove River can last long past December.

• Parsonsfield: River (orig. Joni Mitchell) [2016]

We first took note of The Stray Birds when they were coming up on Falcon Ridge, too. Here’s the string-trio-and-then-some on this past year’s Decoration Day Sampler from Brooklyn-and-Nashville-based production house Mason Jar Music – an annual compilation which usually serves as frequent flyer in our year’s end round-up – with a take on Dylan that boasts an apt slipperiness in the voice and a funky, chunky arrangement: pitch-perfect folkband folk sure to thrill those who love the country comfort of Gillian Welch, Gram Parsons, Old Crow Medicine Show and more.

• The Stray Birds: Mississippi (orig. Bob Dylan) [2016]

Jeffrey Foucault‘s been featured here several times before: as a solo artist early in our incarnation; later as a songsmith and collaborator with Mulvey and now-spouse Kris Delmhorst. But his recent video covers are perfect, precise carriers of his craft: close your eyes, and you can still hear the rugged face bobbing in and out of the frame; the wringing, nuanced movement of body, hands and guitar barely contained by the margins of song and solace; the soothing sepia wash that ages the soul. No Depression recently named him one of six Roots Artists On The Verge, but as far as we’re concerned, Foucault is already a master, dusty with the roads of a thousand miles and more.

• Jeffrey Foucault: Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) (orig. Bob Dylan) [2017]

• Jeffrey Foucault: The Devil’s Real (orig. Chris Smither) [2016]

Always ad-free and artist-centric, Cover Lay Down has been making noise about music since 2007 thanks to the generous support of readers like you. Click here to help fund the continued promotion of authenticity and craft through coverage, and get our very own super-secret covers mix as our thanks!

What a month it’s been for coverfolk, with over a hundred newly-recorded live #coversfromhome posted on our Facebook page in just the last 30 days alone. Our cup runneth over, and we’re doing our part, hitting PayPal and Venmo links when we can to keep the music coming and the artists fed as the time of no touring continues; we hope you, too, are finding our daily shares fruitful and fulfilling, and doing your part to support the industry through sharing, commenting, and donating as you can.

But even as the inevitable trend towards live and lo-fi living room sets continues, so does the industry, in parallel. Artists shut into their homes are still releasing albums and other collections of studio-recorded music formally, even if they cannot tour to support their release. Paying for product, and passing it along, too, remains the very best way to support them. And with Bandcamp announcing that they will henceforth waive all profits on the first Friday of each month to support artists hit hard by the pandemic shift, there’s no better time than the present to purchase.

Today, then, we return to these virtual pages, to feature and celebrate the best studio recorded covers albums, tribute sets, and coverfolk singles that have crossed our ears since our last regular feature, way back in February. Read on for news of new releases from old friends and familiar voices – and as always, if you like what you hear, remember to do your part, as a patron and fan, to help keep the music, and the musicians, alive and thriving in a time of need.

We first featured Colorado singer-songwriter John Statz way back in 2012, and again several times afterwards, after a deep dive into his back catalog, subsequent release Tulsa, and a wonderful opening set for Jeffrey Foucault at Signature Sounds label-driven venue The Parlor Room up in Northampton revealed a few more great covers worth celebrating, and a tendency towards concrete comfort in both his songwriting and generally sparse, heartfelt performance that lingers long and serves the soul in equal measure. But nothing could have prepared us for the rich, resonant shift in sound that new album Early Riser, which drops Friday into an uncertain world, brings to the canon – and so we’re especially thrilled to be bringing forth an exclusive today, gifted by the artist himself, that typifies both his inimitable style and sensibility, and the mature cohesion of the album’s chosen production dynamic which supports it so well.

In short, Early Riser is a powerhouse: it should go far, if the new world of stay-at-home production can push it. Strong, well-calibrated arrangements and instrumentation – flush with Wurlitzer organ and pedal steel, steady drumbeats and high, distant trumpets, alto harmonies sweet and rich like an instrument up against Statz’ shaky head-voiced lyrics and lead – bring depth and balance, justifying the slow, treasured journey through verses and choruses hopeful and determined, straightforward and plainspoken, prescient as hell. Taken as a set, the album teeters on an unsettled edge of coming to terms with the world, with a stunning range and depth of emotion that collapses the lines between contemporary folk and bluesy country rock and true-blue soft Americana. And it aches with a poet’s soul as Statz struggles to simplify the world, and come to terms with the ways it challenges and holds us.

As with his previous recorded works, Early Riser includes a single cover. But where Frightened Rabbit’s Old Old Fashioned and Statz’ 2015 Radiohead waltz embedded themselves among the songwriting, offering tiny, simple comfort midway through solid sets, his take on Joni Mitchell’s Come In From The Cold is a coda steeped in longing, a long, slow build to nowhere just barely tenable at eight minutes, and deliberately so; a tease and a tension, just right for the age, and perfect for the album; a howl in the dark, leaving us safe and welcome in an unsettled world. The timing could not have been better, after all. Listen, and come in, too.

• John Statz: Come In From The Cold (orig. Joni Mitchell)

• John Statz: Old Old Fashioned (orig. Frightened Rabbit)
• John Statz: Motion Picture Soundtrack (orig. Radiohead)

It’s been a long time since we last heard from self-taught North Carolina native Jeremy Squires here at Cover Lay Down: seven years, to be exact, since he released the delicate, softly melodic pair of lo-fi coversongs which capstone new release A Collection of Covers, which hit the streets just as they were closing down, back in mid-March. But happily, the newer tracks on the collection fit right in with the songs that brought us in to begin with, the hipster heart only that much more fulfilled by a short EP-length set of emptiness. Here you’ll find Nirvana, Jason Molina, Pedro The Lion, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and more turned haunting and hollow, raw and sultry, just out of reach in range and reason, stripped-down and steeped in an artist’s history of depression and seclusion. The fragile heart is revealed, and tenderly offered, in tinkling bells and stand-up box piano and slow strummed guitar. Devastation is wrestled from songs that once shouted anger to the world. Each melancholy movement is more precious than the last, and oh so tenderly treated – offering equal evidence of scars and healing, even as they comfort and chill, delight and differentiate.

Rachael Kilgour is a familiar voice here on Cover Lay Down, thanks to an achingly gorgeous set of solo albums that mine the depths of the torn-out soul, with themes of divorce and reconciliation and a longing for a simpler life, and an upcoming project featuring songs for her father, revealing truth and tenderness in the mining of the broken heart’s desire, and it’s need to be free. And so we were initially wary, to note that Sound an Echo, the new Rachael Kilgour duo project with fiddler Sara Pajunen, is a singer-songwriter’s tradfolk pairing, with a debut album And We’ll All Go Together short but rich with songs so carefully constructed and arranged, they hardly shift when performed live on screen from Kilgour’s foyer, as we’ve seen and shared on Facebook.

But if the songs of this new project originally come from a different, more distant heart, their performance belies how deeply that heart becomes intertwined in the right hands and voices. Paired with Pajunen, whose voice is equally strong in harmony, the singer-songwriter’s turn towards the tradition is personal as anything, and deeper than one might expect, voicing reclamation of the very heartbeat that is folk music. This set of traditional American folk songs could have been a throw-away, but it isn’t, thanks to sparse arrangements, harmonic interplay between fiddle and plaintive voice, and the innate hope, humility, and sweetness that touches everything Kilgour performs. Instead, in the duo’s hands and voices, the tradition sings itself anew. No higher compliment, nor fate, can we offer, beyond the performance itself.

We spotted Lauren O’Connell here last month, when Bandcamp’s first round of artist supportive give-backs drove her to record and release a tiny collection of Quarantine Covers; since then, she’s added several new tracks to the collection of songs recorded solo in her home in California, and her recent take on That Thing You Do is especially dear, an apt tribute to songwriter Adam Schlessinger of Fountains of Wayne, who wrote the Academy Award-nominated song for the film of the same name way back in 1996, and was, sadly, one of the first artists to pass from the coronavirus.

But if regular readers recognize the name and voice, it’s for good reason: O’Connell has been a constant companion here, with slight, spare interpretations of Neil Young, Iris Dement, David Rawlings, Randy Newman, Oh Death, and more featuring frequently in our mixtapes and songwriter features, most of them sourced back to her first covers album, released just before we moved the blog to its current home. And so the slow release of singles leading up to the eventual release of not one but TWO new covers albums, comprised of songs mostly unheard by all but a few, recorded exclusively for Patreon over the years but spiffed up a bit in the studio afterwards, is a joyous promise, indeed – as is the split between, with the first album coming in a bit more acoustic, and the second featuring a set of songs totally transformed into perfect hipster folkpop, and beautifully, achingly fleshed out in the studio, over the course of the year gone by. Take a listen to the two released so far – a lovely Jeff Tweedy number, and a take on popular Big Star cover tune Thirteen that adds much to the canon – and then either join her Patreon page to access the albums now, or wait in sufferance as the songs drop one at a time, every two weeks, on all the usual platforms, until the eventual release of both Covers II and Covers III.

One-time Nickel Creek cofounder Sean Watkins was here recently, too, thanks to a beautiful early 2020 release with neotradfolkers The Bee Eaters featured in our February (Re)Covered roundup, complete with covers of Warren Zevon and Paul Simon that rang in the head for days after we first played ’em. But Watkins has been busy this year, and new release brother sister – a partnership of sound and songs recorded with sister Sara of Grammy-winning trio I’m With Her – has its own quirky charm: sibling voices in diverse settings, from the sparse and almost unadorned to the boogie-woogie fiddle-and-kick of barnburning closer Keep It Clean, a Watkins Family Hour drawn close and intimate as its title. Here, a video version recorded at fave YouTube cover house stories recently – not on the album, but worth the Green Day vibe transcribed into smallfolk – joins our favorite album cover, another Zevon song, this one sweet and aching in its simplicity, every note a masterpiece.

• The Watkins Family: Accidentally Like A Martyr (orig. Warren Zevon)

Finally, news of a different kind of project: free recordings for the taking, all covers of the same song, prompted and curated by one-time teen sensation and current activist and community rabblerouser Janis Ian (yes, THAT Janis Ian) in the early stages of our communal separation. The song is new, and the mechanism as much her style as the song itself; both sheet music and songbook are offered openly, with an offer that those who record it will also share their interpretation on her own page. And happily, the song itself – appropriately titled Better Times Will Come – isn’t bad, nor inappropriate for this sort of thing: catchy, open to broad interpretation; inspirational, without being too twee or unrealistic.

When we first caught wind of Better Times Will Come, we assumed it would attract an older crowd – this is, after all, Janis Ian, whose fame was greatest decades ago, at seventeen, though her respect among her peers has only grown as she has come into her own on the folk circuit more recently, decades past the restrictions of industry and youth. But the breadth of song and coverage that is emerging as the project takes flight speaks to that broader, deeper respect within the community, both for Ian herself, and her way with words and melody. As such, the almost twenty and counting coversingers of the song shared on the webpage now include not only John Gorka, Christine Lavin, and Cliff Eberhardt with Louise Mosrey, but Natalia Zuckerman, Casey Dreissen, and even Frank Turner, in a surprisingly upbeat take complete with tambourine and a high energy base and guitar strum we could not, in good conscience, choose not to share here, as well. Listen, and then head over to the Better Times Will Come project page, to download them all.

• Frank Turner: Better Times Will Come (orig. Janis Ian)
• Natalia Zuckerman: Better Times Will Come (ibid.)

Always ad-free and artist-centered, Cover Lay Down has been on the web since 2007, thanks to kind support from artists, promoters, and YOU.

So do your part: listen, and then follow links back to the sources we provide, to share your love with those who make this all happen. And though it should go without saying, as always, when you find what you love, please be a patron, too: buy the music, or the t-shirt, from artist-friendly sources like Bandcamp; donate to newly-formed artist support funds, join Patreons and Kickstarters, and follow Venmo and Paypal links to give back if you can, the better to keep the music flowing in these troubling times.

Saturdays used to be ours: the one day a week when no one had to work, or get ready for it. And because we live in the woods, that generally meant driving somewhere – breakfast, a museum, a festival, a small town to wander in, a tour of some old estate – anything, really, as long as it afforded us a chance to be together, just the four of us in and out of the minivan, looking out the window and sharing in the joy of adventure and discovery.

Now I get up while they’re sleeping, and start each Saturday with a long trip alone in the car: first the rural roads, then the small towns, with their weekender Farmer’s Markets, now dwindled down to a single canopy with root vegetables and a stalwart local in a parka; from there into Sturbridge and its commercial strip; then onto the Turnpike, then South on 495, and then another half hour North again, along and into the sleepy suburbs. Finally, I arrive at the assisted living complex where I lived this summer, while I moved my father and as much of his photos, books and records as we could carry from his independent living apartment into a 12×20 room, creating in the process a compact yet life-sized diorama of a life once lived large and well. We have lunch, which can take hours: out of the apartment with keys and credit card, in and out of the car, into the restaurant, back home again. I help out for a few hours more, tending to bills and chores, maybe reteaching him how to turn on the CD player, or starting a Netflix video for him to watch later.

And then I say goodbye. And I do the same drive all over again, only backwards, and in darkness.

I could drive it in my sleep, either way.

My brothers would come, but they live in other countries; he’s an only child, and his cousins live too far. He tends to avoid the other residents – they are, after all, a decade or more older than him on average, and he doesn’t identify with their needs or outlook, nor with their acceptance of what they can and cannot do for themselves.

And so, mostly, when it comes to Dad, it’s me or nothing.

It’s hard to watch. My father used to be Superman, though the world got more of him than I did: a self-made man in Saville Row suits and a thousand silk ties, a hard-stock business- card-carrying managing partner who pulled himself up into suburban success with nothing more than street smarts, determination, and a blazing intellect. He was one of the most powerful, influential lawyers in Boston; he had a hundred dear, close friends. His marriage worked, or so it looked on the outside; his kids were happy, see above.

Then Dad started falling asleep at his desk at work. Early onset Parkinson’s led to early retirement; his marriage fell apart; his kids moved out, and on. His circle of friends began to shrink; once he moved on to this small, spare assisted living apartment complex 30 minutes away, with a few exceptions, they stopped coming by altogether.

He blames the distance, but I think we both know the truth. And we forgive them, because we know it’s hard to watch those you love lose the things that brought you that love in the first place.

I’m a lot closer to my father than I used to be – even as the list of things my father used to be grows longer every week. But I’m fighting for balance, too. For years, I gave Saturdays to the children; now, just as the specter of college and adulthood begins to blossom in them, I choose to give my father the time I used to save for us. And it matters. To become my father’s lists, his agendas, his shopping cart guide, I have had to take a leave of absence from the adventures we used to take Saturdays, when the kids were small.

I worry, sometimes, on the long miles back and forth to Boston every weekend, that the model I am giving them is one which will ask them to take time from their own kids to give it to me, someday. Parkinson’s is hereditary, after all. My mother’s father had it, too.

But mostly, on those long miles down the turnpike, and in those afternoons in and out of Dad’s tiny room on the assisted living floor, I’m struggling with something bigger than anything I can put into words. I think it’s what my students call “the feels” – a complicated set of sadness and love and powerlessness in the face of loss that calls us to be still, and embrace our affliction, because we can’t do anything else.

It’s disorienting to just drive, and feel. Feeling the feels doesn’t play to my strengths. I’m like Dad, in that way: I’m used to being someone who makes sense of the world by taming it, turning it into something sensible and concrete – through writing, or teaching, and other product-oriented pursuits.

I know Dad is struggling with this, too. I know, because in my wallet, I carry one of his newer business cards – the ones that he made after his retirement, that just say “every step of the journey, is the journey”. For a long time, it sustained me on Saturdays, as I drove in for what I think of, increasingly, as a sort of shared Zen practice: the two of us, in the waning afternoon light, trying to find our balance in the shifting eye of the storm that is our lives, together, now; and in the aftermath, as I drove back home quietly in the darkness.

Cars generally represent freedom or power, control or escape; the ability to get the hell out, or to come back home again. But just as that one friend with a truck knows you’ll call him up for help on moving day, soft songwriters know that the car can be the chain that pulls you down, too: the enabling tool, the thief of time.

More and more, on those long hours back and forth on what used to be my time with my wife and kids, I’ve come to think of the car as a burden, the road as prison cell, the driving as the penance for too much love, and a life lived fully up until now.

And although this year, for Thanksgiving, I am grateful for so much in my life, I really, really miss the days when we drove together, the four of us, over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house and table.

Because this year, for the first time, they left without me, to have a beachside adventure with their young cousins, my wife’s parents and her sisters, and their respective dogs before moving on to the delightful oceanside inn where we would meet up for the feast.

And for me, on my own, it was two hours to pick up Dad, two hours South to meet up with the clan, two hours of helping Dad through the restaurant buffet, and then four hours back again, just me and my faltering, fading father, driving in mostly silence, listening to the relationship between us stutter and fade as he sleeps and struggles to understand.

It was a long way there, and a long way home, to have so little time with the rest of the family I love. And it was hard, really hard, for Dad to ask in the car about the others at the table, and to realize that I had spent all my time and attention attending to him.

But this Saturday I took the day off, and drove downtown with the family for the annual multi-venue town crafts fair. I held hands with the wee one, now tall and slender at 14, as we picked out stocking stuffers, as we have done each year: small earrings and baubles, local honey balms and soaps, fingerless gloves and yarn scarves, handmade journals for secrets and poetry. The elderchild brought her new boyfriend, who was Romeo in the play we just finished; he seemed grateful to be with her, and eager to discover the delights of small community life alongside us. My wife and I kissed in passing, each time we found each other among the hustle and squeeze of stalls – we’re romantics; the seasonal kick-off gets to us, I guess.

It was a good day, for such a short drive. And good, too, to be home with time enough to write, and compile a playlist of driving songs.

May your travels this season be pensive and merry, in equal delight and measure.

And if you need company for the long, lonely miles, try these.

• Patty Griffin: Stolen Car (orig. Bruce Springsteen) [2002]
• Richard Shindell: Northbound 45 (orig. Jeffrey Foucault) [2007]
• Jon Randall: Highway (orig. Moody Blues) [2011]
• Red Molly: Gulf Coast Highway (orig. Nanci Griffith) [2010]
• Deni Hlavinka: Chasing Cars (orig. Snow Patrol) [2012]
• Transmissionary Six: Always Crashing In The Same Car (orig. David Bowie) [2003]
• Brandi Carlisle & Emmylou Harris: Take Me Home, Country Roads (orig. John Denver) [2013]
• Holly Figueroa O’Reilly: One Headlight (orig. The Wallflowers) [2011]
• The Bad Shepherds: Road to Nowhere (orig. Talking Heads) [2013]
• David Swan: Late Night Driving (orig. Josh Pyke) [2015]
• The Panics: Wide Open Road (orig. The Triffids) [2008]
• Passenger: Fast Car (orig. Tracy Chapman) [2017]
• Boyce Avenue: Drive (orig. Incubus) [2013]
• Lotte Kestner: Drive (orig. The Cars) [2019]
• Hayward Williams: Thunder Road (orig. Bruce Springsteen) [2007]

Always ad-free and artist-centric, Cover Lay Down has been exploring the ethnographic intersection of folk and coversong since 2007 thanks to the support of artists, labels, promoters, and readers like YOU. So do your part: listen, love, like, and above all, follow links to purchase the music, the better to keep it alive.

It’s been ten years exactly since we last drilled down deep into the Neil Young songbook here on Cover Lay Down, in a short feature introducing the transformative all-female American Laundromat double-disc for-charity tribute Cinnamon Girl, accompanied by several exclusive label-approved tracks from that record and a delicious set of similar delights from The Wailin’ Jennys, The Indigo Girls, Emmylou Harris, Carrie Rodriguez, Elizabeth Mitchell, and more great folkwomen teetering on the well-traveled intersection of rock, pop, and folk.

A decade later, Cinnamon Girl remains a go-to exemplar in the world of coverage: a powerhouse indie collection, “a great and well-balanced listen from cover to cover”, and “the tribute album Neil Young has deserved for most of his long and prolific career.” Several of its covers, including Lori McKenna’s unadorned twangfolk The Needle And The Damage Done, The Watson Twins’ sweet Powderfinger, and Canadian duo Dala’s beautiful, wistful harmony takes on Ohio and A Man Needs A Maid, continue to stand out as true-blue favorites. And – since it is still available – we would be remiss in taking this opportunity to redirect you to it, that you, too, might revel in its femfolk-to-riot-grrl approach, and support Casting For Recovery, who aim to enhance the quality of life of women with breast cancer through a unique retreat program that combines breast cancer education and peer support with therapeutic fly fishing.

But just as the past must be celebrated, so, too, do our ears and hearts evolve. As listeners, our subjective evolution in that decade has brought us closer towards a subtle appreciation of the deconstructionist approach. As cultural explorers, we respect and recognize Young’s recent move to put his entire archive online for free – a move that will surely spark deep artistic exploration and new coverage going forward. As agents of discovery and spread, we celebrate the ongoing reclamation of the Canadian singer-songwriter’s prolific portfolio, even as we note its turn towards the trends and tropes of its next generation.

And so, today, we revisit the Neil Young songbook with a collection of covers recorded in the intervening decade that trend towards the broken and bent, and the mellow and melodic: an omnibus mix, coupling beloved recordings from folk, Americana, indie and roots artists with newfound delights from Bandcamp, YouTube, and other discovery spaces. May it stand as our solution for those who, like us, struggle to reconcile our distaste for the songwriter’s whine with our great respect and admiration for both the grit and elegance of his pen, and his vast catalog of poetic yet straightforward songs which continues to give voice “to the plight of the powerless and the disaffected in modern American culture.”

Neil Young, Covered In Folk (2008-2018)
* listen track-by-track, or download the whole mix here!

• Matthew & Jill Barber: Comes A Time (2016)
• Caitlin Canty: Unknown Legend (2015)
• Redbird: For The Turnstiles (2011)
• Scott Matthew: Harvest Moon (2013)
• Willis: Harvest (2011)
• Forest: Natural Beauty (2017)
• Liz Snyder: Out On The Weekend (2015)
• City and Colour: Cowgirl In The Sand (2017)
• Cassie Lopez: Mellow My Mind (2012)
• Eef Barzelay: Borrowed Tune (2015)
• Andrew Corradini: Human Highway (2015)
• Jeffrey Foucault: Albuquerque (2011)
• Annabelle Chvostek: Like A Hurricane (2016)
• Jodi Pederson: Rockin’ In The Free World (2013)
• Alex Vissia: Journey Through the Past (2014)
• Reid Jamieson: Winterlong (2012)
  
• Low Roar: Philadelphia (2013)
• Rebecca Loebe: Southern Man (2017)
• Molly Tuttle: Helpless (2016)
• Corey Huevel: Ohio (2012)
• Lowland Hum: Tell Me Why (2014)
• Alyssa Bonagura: Old Man (2013)
• Whitney and Thomas: Expecting To Fly (2012)
• Sam Amidon: The Needle and The Damage Done (2011)
• Rickie Lee Jones: Only Love Can Break Your Heart (2012)
• Matt Franklin: Sugar Mountain (2012)
• William Crighton: After The Goldrush (2017)
• Apey: Down By The River (2017)
• Grant Earl LaValley: Don’t Let It Bring You Down (2017)
• Sarah Jane Scouten & The Paperboys: Long May You Run (2017)
• John Earle Mainord: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (2016)
• Melanie Peterson: Wrecking Ball (2014)
• Lisa Loeb: Love Is A Rose (2008)
• Lauren O’Connell: Heart Of Gold (2014)
• Red Horse: I Am A Child (2010)
• orange cake mix: Little Wing (2008)
• Rinehart: Cortez The Killer (2013)
• The Washover Fans: Cinnamon Girl (2012)
• Marissa Nadler: Birds (2011)
• Mark Erelli & Jeffrey Foucault: Powderfinger (2010)
• Nils Lofgren: World On A String (2009)
• Landon AR Coleman: Down To The Wire (2011)
• Mumford & Sons: Dance Dance Dance (2010)
• Marty Pawlina: My My Hey Hey (2014)
• J. Tillman: Tonight’s The Night (2011)

Always ad-free and artist-centered, Cover Lay Down has been exploring the ethnographic intersection of coverage and folk roots on the web since 2007 thanks to the kind support of readers like you. If you like what you hear, click through to purchase albums and support the artists we love, the better to keep the music going in an age of micro-transactions. And, as always, if you wish to help us in our ongoing mission, we hope you’ll consider a donation to Cover Lay Down.

By its very nature, the cover celebrates iteration over song. And our Year’s Best Coverfolk Videos collection was originally envisioned as a way to acknowledge that, by celebrating in their “native medium” those performances which truly lose something essential when what we see is separated out from what we hear – an approach which favors live and in-studio performances over produced videographic content, and generally eschews the promotional post-recording “music video”.

How we celebrate this specific source and its coverfolk has come in and out of fashion here at Cover Lay Down, growing from a single category in our Year’s Best Coverfolk Albums features as recently as 2013 to a two-parter, with separate features for our top Coverfolk Video Singles and The best cover sessions, sets, and series, in 2015. This year, any attempt to commodify just “the native ones” is further complicated by the facts that a) we’re much later than usual, and b) despite previous-year concern that stripping the visuals from these multimedia texts potentially undermines their in-the-moment intent, we did it several times this year, most often in service to themed features where the startling-yet-intimate eye-candy atmosphere of a video might interrupt or even overwhelm the tonal focus of the writing itself.

In turn, although we tried to stick to those which stood on their own as audio-only, our trend towards flattening videos into Mp3s seems driven by a prioritization of the personal over the critical here on the blog as life grows ever more complicated, and what was once a twice weekly behemoth has become a less frequent but – we hope – in many ways a more deep ethnographic exploration of the ways in which the folkways influences both artists, and us. But this, too, is not so much a problem as an artifact of what we do, exactly: to live as a coverblogger is, after all, to embody the give-and-take ownership between artist and listener, both on a mass scale and on a very personal one.

Call it an artifact of context over convenience, then. Although a few performances we originally discovered on video (including great cuts from YouTube-to-TV stars Holly Henry and Janet Devlin, frequent-flyer and indie-slash-electrofolk genre-crosser Nataly Dawn, a lovely series of 10 covers of Canadian artists presented in honor of Canada’s 150th anniversary by Bailey Pelkman, and a wonderful Outkast cover from vocal popgroup Pentatonix’ departed bass-man, all of whom will appear in our Best Singles Mix) do in the end stand up just fine as audio-only cuts, we still believe that, in the ideal sense, the very design of at least some subsection of the vast array of ‘tube-sourced recordings that populate the sharing sites beg to be experienced in their native medium. For now, anyway, and for this year.

And so – while we finish curating our Best Coverfolk Singles Mixtape of 2017 (which we intend to release soon!), and wait for the last guests to wake up, eat breakfast, and depart from for our annual early-bird New Years party – Cover Lay Down proudly presents our very subjective favorite videographic performances of 2017, an amalgamated mix of 13 favorite singles and coverset selections. Enjoy, and Happy New Year!

The Year’s Best Coverfolk Videos, 2017

Kina Grannis: When You Come Back Down (orig. Nickel Creek)

Kina Grannis is welcome and well-celebrated here on Cover Lay Down; she was one of the very first YouTube stars, and one of our first YouTube discoveries. But Grannis has been on fire this year, releasing a mix of sparklingly well-produced single-shot video covers that trend towards the polar ends of coverage, the undone and the redone: this year’s gems include stripped-down recasts of rap and pop tracks such as Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise, Jimmy Eat World’s In The Middle, and Khalid’s Young Dumb & Broke, and softer folk and indie sources such as Bob Dylan (Blowin’ In The Wind), Etta James (At Last), and Sting (Fields of Gold), which, although closer in tenderness to the originals, nonetheless leave us breathless. Here, in her final cover of the year, she takes on our favorite Nickel Creek song, joyfully and with eyes half-closed, as always – and we’re glad, indeed, that she knows it, and has the chops to do it so well.

Passenger: A Change Is Gonna Come (orig. Sam Cooke)

The thirteen coversongs that comprised Passenger‘s Sunday Night Sessions – a set of video occasionals, with takes on Van Morrison, The Rolling Stones, Tracy Chapman, Bill Withers, Don McLean, Joy Division and more, recorded and filmed on location as the artist and his band toured the world – comprise a would-be hands-down favorite this year in our annual look at the single-artist cover series. The songs have since been recast and released as a ten-track streaming-only covers album, and it was mighty tempting, indeed, to include the album in our Best Coverfolk Albums rundown earlier this week – but the site-specific energy of these covers are so potent an addition to their musicality, in the end, we saved them for fuller feature here.

Tallest Man On Earth: Both Sides Now (orig. Joni Mitchell)

The Light in Demos is a pensive and deeply personal acoustic video project after our own heart, produced, written, directed, recorded, shot and edited entirely by Swedish artist Saras Per Kristian Matsson, also known as The Tallest Man on Earth. Eight songs in, the set includes six reworked and unfinished originals which bring new life and resonance to the growing search and songbook of one of our favorite musical explorers, and two covers: A Nick Drake familiarity, and this, “the best song in the world”, performed barefoot and with ringing reverb that brings a layer of stillness and eternity to both song and setting.

Twisted Pine: Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (orig. The Beatles)

Announced just last week as recipients of one of Club Passim’s newest Iguana Music Fund grant recipients, Boston-based production-house Red Line Roots’ Old Spruce Sessions are recorded largely in found spaces, in off-stage moments borrowed from touring artists. Unlike their previously-celebrated Locals Cover Locals collections, a Bandcamp-sourced product chock full of predominantly singer-songwriter and small folk duo-and-trio performances, their video series is heavy on the earthy and organic, chock full of bluegrass and old-timey stuff; lo-fi delights worth celebration include a multitude of up-and-coming artists’ originals, Billy Strings’ backstage take on Cocaine Blues, and two Beatles covers: a gentle take on Norwegian Wood filmed in the attic of a rural Vermont town hall, and this tense, terrific wonder from deconstructed bluegrass quartet Twisted Pine, recorded in the fields of this year’s Green River Festival.

Darlingside: 1979 (orig. Smashing Pumpkins)

We’ve shared versions of this cover before. And we’ve loved video of it, too, such as this 2015 Kitchen Sessions performance, which arguably maintains a bit more in-the-moment fast-paced energy. But this one is balanced and pristine – the perfect, grungy-yet-polished final cut we’ve been waiting for since we first heard Darlingside’s arrangement of this Smashing Pumpkins tune raw and barely rehearsed in the fields of Falcon Ridge, where we first discovered the band, perhaps the perfect ambassadors for what well may be the newest branch of folk. Subscribe to Under The Apple Tree for more strong video coverage, too, including a potent full-band posthumous cover of Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ from Robert Vincent, a slow and gorgeous three-part harmony take on Dolly Parton’s Jolene, and a beautiful live take on Dire Straits tune Brothers In Arms from Xander & the Peace Pirates which almost, almost, took the place of the above.

Walk Off The Earth: Shape Of You (orig. Ed Sheeran)

Though they’re more an acoustic rock band than a folk act, the cheerful, playful work of Hawaiian video project Walk Off The Earth, whose work is almost always designed to be seen as much as heard, has thrilled us before – see, for example, their lovely cardboard video for Malvina Reynolds song Little Boxes, which we raved about five years ago, and last year’s sunny version of The Chainsmokers’ Closer. This year, tightly choreographed, highly percussive and energetic performances continued to be the norm, and along with a campfire tribute to Tom Petty, this Ed Sheeran earworm is one of their best. With over twelve million views on YouTube already, you’ve probably heard it before – but it’s catchy, gleeful, and worth hearing again.

Katie Ferrara: Tangerine (orig. Led Zeppelin)

We featured LA busker and bar-singer Katie Ferrara back in July, celebrating her “convertible-top-down folk-pop powerhouse” EP with “a well-produced, subtly sensational, and eminently summery doozy of a Creedence cover” that matched in-studio recording shots with dreamy images and video from a recent flight from Miami. But there’s something lovely and intimate about Ferrara’s new Lemon Cat cover sessions, appropriately filmed against a yellow background, and all from December. Click through for more, including an electric take on Bob Marley’s Turn Your Lights Down Low, and – as if to justify our late entry into the universe of 2017 – her sultry version of Aerosmith’s Crazy.

Jeffrey Foucault: Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) (orig. Bob Dylan)

Like a few others on this year’s Best Videos list, we shared this cut first via our Facebook page – in this case, way back in February, along with another of Jeffrey Foucault’s political covers, originally by Danny O’Keefe by way of Chris Smither, which seems to exist only on the etherial social space, and thus confounds our ability to embed it here. But these stark, faceless, sepia-toned videos from the current champion of dustbowl despair ache with angst and anger, offering perfect settings for the songs themselves. They still haunt us, and they should.

Mark Broussard: Sweet Baby James (orig. James Taylor)

A slow-release February-into-March mostly-covers session with his father Ted playing alongside him converted us, instantly, into fans of the soulful Marc Broussard – and sent us scrambling to collect the entire set, including their takes on Do Right Woman, Do Right Man, Loggins and Messina classic House at Pooh Corner, and a slam-dunk version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow dedicated to a very special lost soul. Simple yet nuanced, this bluesfolk is bare and bare-bones, as it should be….and should Broussard decide, after all, to record a for-charity children’s lullaby album, we’ll be one of the first in line to help push it into the world.

Rus Reppert: Fly Like An Eagle (orig. Steve Miller)

It’s dark, and cavernous – like the deserted warehouse in which it was filmed – and maybe that’s the point. And it’s a loop cover – which, for the uninitiated, means it’s built live from the ground up, just one man and a solo guitar, and a set of pedals to control it all. For all these reasons and more, this December-filmed, February-released Steve Miller cover from West Virginia songwriter Rus Reppert absolutely, positively belongs here on our Best Videos collection; strip the visuals, and you’d lose both the darkness and the intimate immediacy of it all. Follow the threads, too, to Candyrat Records, which is chock full of utterly stunning live acoustic fingerstyle covers and originals, most without lyrics.

Upstate Rubdown: I’m Looking Through You (orig. The Beatles)

We made some wonderful new discoveries and a host of great memories at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival this year, but it was hard not to love Upstate Rubdown, a down-to-earth all-acoustic “big band” from New York’s Hudson Valley region whose music fuses folk, roots, funk, swing, and more, and every performance is a party and a half. We named this video one of our Year’s Best the moment we found it, and we don’t regret the early call one bit.

I’m With Her: Send My Love (To Your New Lover) (orig. Adele)

This bass-and-vox cover from indiefolk supergroup I’m With Her, recorded live on their American Acoustic tour over the summer, was released “on all streaming/downloading apps” as a benefit recording for Thistle Farms, a Nashville-based nonprofit that heals, empowers and employs survivors of trafficking, prostitution and addiction. Switch out the video, though, and you’d miss both the intimacy of the performance, and the way the high, stark contrast of black dresses and blond wood stage reflects this every-note-counts homage to Adele.

The Sea The Sea: I’ll Keep It With Mine (orig. Bob Dylan)

A transformed Dylan tune filmed and recorded live mid-year by way of introduction to old friends (and now married couple) Chuck and Mira’s newly expanded foursome, still playing under the The Sea, The Sea moniker. A tight, controlled percussive sound and lush vocals that nonetheless retain the careful and sparse arrangements typical of their performance. After this fishbowl fantasy – and a lovely tree-side Concert Window session of holiday songs and carols that filled our own living room the night we brought our own tree home – we’re looking to have them back to our Unity House Series as soon as we can find a date.

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 year’s end 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 well-loved but otherwise unshared covers from 2016-2017, including exclusive live covers from our very own Unity House Concert series.

Regular readers may recall that we hold a special place in our hearts for Boston-based singer-songwriter and sideman extraordinaire Mark Erelli, who recorded his 2001 album The Memorial Hall Recordings in a stately Civil-War-era edifice in our little town, and returned a decade later to grace us with our own little house concert. Indeed, we’ve written so much about Erelli here at Cover Lay Down since our humble beginnings ten years ago – most recently for his double-dip coverage of Dawes, a posthumous homage to Prince, and his previous covers album, a tribute to folk icon Bill Morrissey – it’s hard to know where to begin again.

But MIXTAPE, Mark’s newest project, now in its final days of a crowdsourced campaign over at Kickstarter, offers the perfect coincidence for our love of both Mark Erelli and the celebration of song and culture through coverage. And so, today, we turn once again to one of our very favorite artists, in the hopes that you, too, might lend your patronage to its release.

Though his original recordings are themselves both revered and well-covered by his peers and fans, Mark Erelli’s penchant for covers is well-known in the folkworld. His long-standing and always-worth-checking Mp3 of the Month series, released through his website, has long fed our hunger for great live and lo-fi demo recordings, and currently features a wonderful live take on Roy Orbison’s Crying; his work with bluegrass-tinged collaborative Barnstar! gave us raucous, rollicking takes on Dawes, Josh Ritter, and more. His soft and mostly-solo acoustic lullabies album Innocent When You Dream, recorded originally as a gift for family and friends, is tender and sweet, perfect for the mellow hours with or without children. And we celebrated Milltowns, his 2014 tribute to Bill Morrissey, as a warm, deep, surprisingly poignant tribute to a legendary singer-songwriter featuring multi-instrumentalist and performer-and-interpreter extraordinaire Erelli at his studio best and some smashing sideline work from the likes of Peter Mulvey, Rose Cousins, Kris Delmhorst, Jeffrey Foucault, Anais Mitchell, & Rose Polenzani – all artists we’ve featured on these pages before.

MIXTAPE, which will not officially drop until January of 2018, adds something new and exciting to these collected works: a tribute to both that broader, diverse culture that influences us, and to his perennially sold-out Under The Covers concert sessions, hosted at Club Passim in Cambridge by Erelli and a host of famous friends each December for the past 14 years, that have for years offered joyous celebration of the songs and songwriters that have influenced them, their cultural upbringing, and their craft.

Recorded live at Great North Sound Society up in Maine with a small group of friends (and fellow members of Josh Ritter’s band), all indicators suggest that MIXTAPE is a comprehensive fulfillment of the promise of catchy songcraft, tender and gleeful homage, and deft, detailed, delightful musicianship that has come to represent the hallmark of Erelli’s career and coverage. The tracklisting, which includes songs from the Grateful Dead, Phil Collins, Neko Case, Patty Griffin, Arcade Fire, Solomon Burke, and more, is a temptress, indeed; his cover of Don Henley’s Boys of Summer, a haunting, soulful studio track released earlier this week over at Cover Me, and the live video of the recording session for The Band classic Ophelia, which you can hear and see below, lend substance to that promise, and fuel our excitement.

Mark’s own words regarding this high-energy take on Ophelia are especially revealing, and fit neatly with both our celebration of the impending collection and of our ongoing exploration of the ethnographic function of coverage as integral to the communality of the folkways:

When I think of how music should ideally sound —soulful, melodic, restrained virtuosity over a serious groove — I keep circling back to The Band. I’m not sure that anyone, anyone, has done music better than this group on its first two records. On this masterpiece from their later years, I wanted to evoke a bit of all those things I love most about playing music. A lofty goal for sure, but Ray Rizzo’s rimshot-heavy groove and the New Orleans bounce in Sam Kassirer’s piano took me most of the way there. That’s Jake Armerding, 14-year veteran of the annual Under The Covers shows and fellow Barnstar! member, tearing it up on the fiddle.

In short, then: we’re eager to hear MIXTAPE in full, especially because the above-mentioned tracks, and all previous indicators, suggest that the Kickstarter campaign – now in its last six days – is not kidding when it refers to the album as a true opportunity to hear Mark Erelli’s potent, inimitable voice unleashed.

But to truly unleash MIXTAPE, Erelli needs our support.

So click on through to the Mark Erelli Made You A MIXTAPE Kickstarter to lend your patronage now, before the clock runs out. Snag a patronage gift, from signed and downloadable copies of the album in your mailbox two whole months before its official release to bonus covertracks, out of print records, bootlegs, concert tickets, cover song recordings of your choice, and more.

And then, while you wait for your album and patronage incentives to arrive – since we’ve shared so many of Mark’s own covers before – click back through a foursome of our previous features on Erelli’s coverage below, the better to anticipate the gift that MIXTAPE represents.

But first, a total bonus: We are thrilled to announce that Mark Erelli will be helping us celebrate Cover Lay Down’s 10th anniversary with a pre-album-release show at our very own Unity House Concerts in Springfield, MA, on December 9, just a week before his 14th annual Passim show with bassman Zachariah Hickman and fiddle player Jake Amerding. We’ll be announcing ticket sales in the next few weeks on our Facebook page, so stay tuned; Mark has promised to use the set as an opportunity to test out some of his newest covers for this year’s Passim sets, so the coverage should be thick on the ground.

As an extra incentive to our readers and fans, all who contribute to Mark Erelli’s MIXTAPE Kickstarter at the $25 level or above will receive an exclusive invitation to an appetizers-and-drinks reception before the show, and a soundboard recording of three carefully-chosen covers from that show, with our grateful thanks for your support of both the artist and his art.

Previously on Cover Lay Down:

• Kickstarter Covers, Vol. 1: Mark Erelli Pays Adept Tribute to Bill Morrissey

• (Re)Covered: New Coverage From Old Friends Allysen Callery, Coty Hogue, Mark Erelli, Amber Rubarth, Reid Jamieson and more!

• Double Dippers, Vol. 1: Singer-songwriters visit & revisit Dylan, Dawes, Guthrie, Springsteen, John Prine, and more!

• Mark Erelli Covers: Townes Van Zandt, Roy Orbison, Paul Simon, Porter Wagoner & 12 more!

Looking for more? Today’s bonus tracks feature a sextet of contemporaries taking on the Mark Erelli songbook.

• Rose Cousins: Tired Eyes (orig. Mark Erelli)
• Caitlin Canty: Wyoming Wind (orig. Mark Erelli)
• Red Molly: Ghost (orig. Mark Erelli)
• Chuck E Costa: Hollow Man (orig Mark Erelli)
• Ellis Paul: The Only Way (orig. Mark Erelli)
• Boo Lee Crosser: Volunteers (orig. Mark Erelli)

Always ad-free and artist-friendly, Cover Lay Down celebrates ten years on the web this year thanks to the ongoing support of readers like you.

Sundays mean lesson planning, in the world of public school teaching. And so, although white-out conditions outside my cozy living room window suggest another snow day tomorrow, I’m looking ahead to Friday, where – in solidarity with those currently calling for a general strike – a few fellow schoolteachers and I are spearheading a National Teach-In in response to ongoing policy concerns which we see as harmful to truth, public education, common decency, and the dignity of our students and their families.

Because a well informed electorate cannot be taken advantage of by “alternate facts”. And because as educators, we believe it is our duty to develop that informed electorate within our own communities.

Historically, teach-ins are a form of civil disobedience, in which professors stand outside the canon, plying their status and knowledge on behalf of the counterculture. But in a very important way, regaining our footing by reclaiming our classrooms and hallways as strongholds of truth and justice is a restorative act, not a political one.

Teaching about the three branches of American government, and their checks and balances, are as innate to the History curriculum as the history of protest song, and its effects and effectiveness. Exploring popularity polls and gerrymandering are perfect pursuits for the Math teacher required by administration to make connections to the real world as they teach. Covering climate change, resource management through pipelines, and other issues currently on the ground in the Sciences is cemented into the pathways we must follow. Art and Music owe themselves to explore the way in which their forms are and have been utilized to speak truth to power, in our past and in our present.

Indeed, arguably, to NOT integrate the larger on-the-ground issues of our time and temperament into the classroom is to abdicate our responsibility to the highly-politicized infrastructure in which teaching and learning currently stand.

To join the Teach-In, then, becomes merely a matter of tweaking the pacing guide, and then delivering a lesson mindfully and joyfully, knowing that others across the nation are doing the same. And if it feels subversive, then perhaps that merely means that this is what teaching should feel like.

And so – since the Common Core Standards which guide my practice as an English teacher mandate that I prepare my students to “Analyze…[the] particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature” – I will spend this Friday with my students analyzing the promise of the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty, and move from there to explore the particular standpoints and imagery of a series of poems by immigrants and second-generation Americans struggling with their identity, before they engage in clarifying and exposing their own cultural perspective and its expression through the creation of poems, essays, posters and more.

And so, today, here and now, we offer a set of topical songs which speak to the potential of the classroom to truly prepare students to engage politically and deliberately in a world drowning in alternate facts and social media echo chambers – both in celebrating its success, and in admonishing its failure.

There are plenty of songs with school-as-setting out there in the universe; we’ve covered them before. There’s a few songs, too, which reference learning, and the academy itself. But today’s parameters are narrow: songs which speak specifically to the act of teaching, either for its relevance to the real, in preparing our next generation for the social and civic world, or – more frequently – for its failure to connect students to that which matters most. And thanks to the crowdsource, we’ve come up with just enough for a fine mix of coverage.

So listen, and rejoice in the fact that even in the midst of a world driven by metrics and testing, there are still enough of us who remember that the essential purpose of education is prepare our students to take on the mantle of critical, deliberate, imaginative world leadership, and are determined to maintain our classrooms as spaces where mindfulness, critical thinking, and social justice aren’t just welcome, they’re part and parcel of our daily practice.

And if you are a teacher, or just know one, please share this post, or the National Teach-In Facebook page, with every teacher, student, and parent you know – both to help us spread the word about Friday, and to stand in solidarity with those who know that knowledge is power…but that only wisdom is liberty.

Teach Your Children Well: A Coverfolk Mix
…now available in handy zip format!

• Sadie Jemmett: Teach Your Children (orig. CSNY) [2012]
• Mike Dezavelle: Wind Up (orig. Jethro Tull) [2015]
• Ronny Cox: I Ought To Know (orig. Jack Hardy) [2016]
• Fionn Regan: Getting Better (orig. The Beatles) [2006]
• Joe Crookston: The Logical Song (orig. Supertramp) [2008]
• Dangerous Folk: Leave It Like It Is (orig. David Wilcox) [2012]
• Iain MacKintosh: Flowers Are Red (orig. Harry Chapin) [1991]
• Anti-Flag: What Did You Learn In School Today (orig. Tom Paxton) [2015]
• Albi and the Wolves: Another Brick In The Wall (orig. Pink Floyd) [2015]
• Edwina Hayes: It’s A Hard Life Wherever You Go (orig. Nanci Griffith) [2012]

Artist-centric and ad-free since 2007, Cover Lay Down thrives throughout the year thanks to the makers, the mailers, and YOU. Tune in as the winter continues for new tributes, cover compilations, and coverfolk singles from 2017, plus resurrected features on Jeffrey Foucault, Randy Newman, and more!

I had big plans to share some thoughts about my conflicted love for America in 2011 on the anniversary of our birth as a nation. But looking in the archives, I saw that I had written it before: both the previous year, when we mused upon the complexity of patriotism in a modern age, and in our first year, at a time when our national discourse was increasingly polarized by the impending presidential election.

Our Single Song Sunday from 2010 remains archived, and we encourage you to head back in time for 10 covers of Paul Simon’s American Tune, and some thoughts on the complicated times which continue to characterize our national zeitgeist. But since it’s been a while, here’s our 2008 post revisited a second time. Its sentiment stands: may your Independence Day be thoughtful, too.

I’m not exactly the patriotic type. I’ve been to more countries than states; I prefer solitude to mall culture. Heck, we don’t even have basic cable. But all power-hungry, commercial/corporate complex, bittersweet modernity aside, I believe in the ideals which frame the constant American dialogue with itself — including first and foremost the requirement that we keep talking, lest we abdicate our role as government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

And I believe that, by definition, as music which speaks of and for a people, American folk music holds a particular place in that conversation which is America. Folk focuses that conversation, making it real and vivid, whether it is through the lens of policy critique or protest cry, the immigrant experience or the internal monologue of a singer-songwriter struggling to be free.

Checks and balances and a mechanism for self-correction; fireworks and barbecue, and the right to make dumb mistakes and have to live with ‘em. Losing love, and falling in it again. Finding hope, and being scared to dream one more time. It’s the American way, all of it — and it’s been that way since inception.

Which is to say: if I may sometimes work to change the policies of those in power, through sharing song or through town meeting politics, it is because I love this country. And I hope I never lose that fluttery feeling in my stomach when we come in for a landing at the international terminal, and I know that I am home.

So let other bloggers share patriotic song today. I’d rather take the country as it is: dialogic, complex, open about its faults and favors, and always looking for a better way. And if saying so means posting songs we have posted here before, then so be it — for these are, after all, timeless songs, with messages that bear repeating.

Happy Birthday, America. Long may your contradictions endear us to you. May you never lose hope. And may we never stop singing.

• Pesky J. Nixon: Americans In Corduroys (orig. Jeffrey Foucault)
  (from Red Ducks, Vol. 2; more Pesky J. Nixon here)

• Lucy Wainwright Roche: America (orig. Paul Simon)
  (from Lucy, more Lucy here)

• Eva Cassidy: American Tune (orig. Paul Simon)
  (from American Tune; more Eva here)

• Melora Creager: American Girl (orig. Tom Petty)
  (from Perplexions; more Melora here)

• Danny Michel: Young Americans (orig. David Bowie)
  (from Loving the Alien; more Danny here)

• Ann Vriend: Rockin’ In The Free World (orig. Neil Young)
  (from Closer Encounters; more Ann here)

• Ballad Of Crows: American Girl (orig. Tom Petty)
  (from Ballad Of Crows; more Ballad Of Crows here)

• Tony Furtado: Fortunate Son (orig. Creedence Clearwater Revival)
  (from Thirteen; more Tony here)

• Richard Shindell: Born in the U.S.A. (orig. Bruce Springsteen)
  (from South of Delia; more Richard here)

• Allison Crowe: Independence Day (orig. Ani DiFranco)
  (from Live at Wood Hall; more Allison here)

• Darryl Purpose: American Noel (orig. Dave Carter)
  (from The Gift of the Magi; more Darryl here)

• Pete & J: America (orig. Paul Simon)
  (from Before The Goldrush; more Pete & J here)

• Keb’ Mo’: America The Beautiful (Bates/Ward)
  (from Big Wide Grin; more Keb’ Mo’ here)

• Michael Weston King: Simple Song of Freedom (orig. Bobby Darin)
  (from I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier; more Michael here)

• Frank Turner: American Girl (orig. Tom Petty)
  (from The Third Three Years; more Frank Turner here)

• David Rawlings Machine: I Hear Them All (orig. Old Crow Medicine Show)
  (from A Friend Of A Friend; more David here)

Always ad-free and artist-centric, Cover Lay Down has been bringing you ethnographic musings on the folkways here and abroad since 2007 thanks to the patronage of readers like you!

We founded our family on the spirits of close community and adventure: it’s in our wedding contract, and one of the main reasons my wife and I both work in education is to ensure that our calendars include time to wander together. But nothing looms as large in our ongoing pursuit of the live and immersive than our annual excursion to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, which this year celebrates its 28th anniversary August 4-7 at Dodd’s Farm in Hillsdale, NY, just over the border from Great Barrington, MA, at the foothills of the Berkshires.

Founded in 1988 to celebrate and sustain the nascent singer-songwriter revival, Falcon Ridge has come to embody the ideals of the modern folkworld, in which fans, artists, concert and radio hosts, and others who live their lives grounded in the diverse ideals and soundscapes of folk come together to celebrate the breadth of the movement, the music, and the community they engender. As ethnomusicologist and regular FRFF attendee Liz Carlisle wrote in her 2006 undergrad thesis on the fest,

As a well developed “state” into which “citizens” opt in, FRFF is not just summer camp for a bunch of delusional, idealistic folk music enthusiasts (folkies)…Indeed, the real-ness of FRFF is at the crux of its symbolic power. The common goal of those who attend is to make the folk music ideal – a vision of shared power and creation, uninhibited personal expression, and general acceptance and love – real through a successful music festival.

Reaching this goal every year can be a challenge, especially in a world where smaller music festivals are falling apart around us – both Clearwater and Gathering of the Vibes have been cancelled for this year, due to a combination of factors that inevitably include financial concerns. But thanks to that efficiency, and a core cohort of volunteers and organizers who work tirelessly year-round to maintain and sustain the place they love, Falcon Ridge Folk Fest continues to offer the best of both the world of intentional community, and the world of folk.

This year’s Falcon Ridge Folk Fest mainstage and workshop stage performers include the usual mix of well known names from three generations of American folk, representing a broad tent, from solo singer-songwriters like Tom Rush, Patty Larkin, Vance Gilbert, Matt Nakoa, Heather Maloney, Eric Schwartz and Peter Mulvey to folk rock, world music, psychedelic, country rock, Americana, and other genre-busting bands and folk supergroups like The Felice Brothers, The Gaslight Tinkers, Brother Sun, Scott Wolfson and Other Heroes, and The Slambovian Circus of Dreams. Well-populated contra dance and children’s stages run throughout the festival, too, and up-and-coming performers play regularly alongside colorful tye-dye, jewelry, henna tattoo parlors, and African drumset sellers in the vendor area, and stalls selling everything from Caribbean goat stew to ice cream, sweet and savory crepes.

Camping at Falcon Ridge isn’t mandatory; only about a third of the attendees each year choose to stay overnight in the fields, and my parents – neither of whom camp – have always found themselves both fully welcome and fully sated by their own experience. But if you can do it, living on site is highly recommended. The sense of community on the farm is palpable and sweet; I have yet to meet a camper who did not discover their own site “family” in their first few hours on the farm, and wandering camp-to-camp brings an evening’s delight, full of laughter and food-sharing. Those who play and sing are always welcome to join in. And, as a bonus for nightowls, the music at Falcon Ridge continues into the wee hours in the campgrounds, where a half-dozen regular formal songcircles and stages like The Budgiedome and Pirate Camp bring together mainstage performers and up-and-coming name-brand performers from the coffeehouse circuit.

Although officially Falcon Ridge doesn’t start until Friday, August 5, Thursday offers its own special pre-fest charm, with a shaded farmer’s market and tasting day on-site that offers the best of local breweries and wineries, dairies and farms. And there’s music, too: some of the best music I’ve seen at Falcon Ridge in the past 4 or 5 years has been presented or previewed on The Lounge Stage, a one-time campsite stage that found it’s way into the main festival grounds to avoid a thunderstorm two years ago, and has since become an officially sanctioned festival-within-a-festival housed under the Dance Tent. Performers for this year’s Lounge Stage have not yet been released, but their ability to select and combine mainstage players and rising stars together for intimate sessions in the round makes the Lounge Stage a must-see; past performers include Jean Rohe, Matt Nakoa, We’re About Nine, John Gorka, Irish Mythen, Pat Wictor, Pesky J. Nixon, Caitlin Canty, Buskin & Batteau, hosts Pesky J. Nixon, and more.

One last note before we get to the music: while Falcon Ridge needs paying patrons to survive, as alluded to in Carlisle’s thesis, it also needs volunteers, and this year’s volunteer pool is currently thin, far below the needed thousand it takes to run the place efficiently. Volunteers get two solid meals a day, free access to campgrounds and the festival itself, and the warm satisfaction of helping build and maintain a crucial cultural locus of love and music, all for the price of a staff t-shirt and a few four-hour shifts throughout the long weekend; if you’re interested in joining up, head over to the volunteer website, and stake your claim for a spot on one of our crews.

Either way, we’d love to have you – and we’re sure you’ll love it, too. So click through below for a 21-track collection of coverfolk from a set of artists who together represent the breadth of modern folk music and the promise of an intentional nation. And then, if you can make it happen, save the date, and register now – as a volunteer or a paying patron – for the very best fest around. We’ll see you there.

Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Preview, 2016
[now available in mixtape format!]

• Tom Rush: Urge For Going (orig. Joni Mitchell) [1968]

• Peter Mulvey: The Fly (orig. U2) [2006]
• Peter Mulvey: Ghost Repeater (orig. Jeffrey Foucault) [2006]
• Peter Mulvey: Old Fashioned Morphine (orig. Jolie Holland) [2012]

• Mike and Ruthy: My New York City (orig. Woody Guthrie) [2012]
• Mike and Ruthy: I’ll Keep It With Mine (orig. Nico)[2007]

• Patty Larkin: Have A Little Faith In Me (orig. John Hiatt) [2000]

• Annika Bennett: I Want You Back (orig. Jackson 5) [2015]

• Heather Maloney: And I Love Her (orig. The Beatles) [2014]
• Heather Maloney w/ Darlingside: Woodstock (orig. Joni Mitchell) [2014]

• Brother Sun: When I’m Gone (orig. Phil Ochs) [2013]

• The Gaslight Tinkers: I Ain’t Got No Home (orig. Woody Guthrie)
• The Gaslight Tinkers: Quite Early Morning (orig. Pete Seeger) [2014]

• The Felice Brothers: Cumberland Gap (trad.)
• The Felice Brothers: Sail Away Ladies (orig. Uncle Dave Macon) [2012]

• Vance Gilbert and Ellis Paul: May I Suggest (orig. Susan Werner) [2003]

• Nerissa & Katryna Nields: Red Red Robin (orig. Al Jolson et al.) [2007]

• Matt Nakoa, Eric Schwartz, Jared Salvatore: Dancing In The Dark (orig. Bruce Springsteen) [2014]
• Matt Nakoa & Eric Schwartz: I’m Only Sleeping (orig. The Beatles) [2015]

• The Slambovian Circus of Dreams: Starman (orig. David Bowie)
• The Slambovian Circus of Dreams: Ghost Riders In The Sky Medley (orig. Stan Jones / Merle Haggard / Johnny Cash) [2010]

Artist-centered and ad-free since 2007, Cover Lay Down shares coverfolk features and ethnographic musings throughout the year thanks to patrons like you. Coming soon: new and newly discovered tributes and cover collections take on Dylan, Blind Willie Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, American tradfolk and more, plus our usual plethora of artist and songbook features as the summer kicks in!

It’s only February, and it’s already been a great year for Tom Petty covers, with the newest addition – a playful take on Wildflowers from rising-star folk-circuit faves Caitlin Canty and Darlingside released just yesterday via Bandcamp – piling on alongside the wonderful American Girl cover featured last week from “acoustic steamboat soul” foursome Roosevelt Dime and Asheville-based songwriter Jane Kramer’s delightful Appalachian-influenced take on relatively obscure deep cut Down South, a trailblazer for Carnival of Hopes, a strong southern folk album due later this month, which popped up in the mailbag mid-January.

These warm, welcoming songs and their surprisingly tender, diverse treatment are especially apt today, in the light of this continued coverage, and on a night that promises to be one of the coldest ever recorded here in the heart of New England, leaving us dreaming of warmer climes and times. Today, then, as a kick-off to a week of school vacation leisure, we revisit and rework that earlier feature, celebrating an American icon with coverage from a set of old favorites and new discoveries that continue to forge ahead in their exploration of the American landscape.

Tom Petty is Florida’s most famous export, musically speaking. Born and raised in Gainesville – where he was inspired by a chance childhood meeting with Elvis and high school guitar lessons from Don Felder of The Eagles – the grinning, iconic frontman and singer-songwriter has sold millions of records, won three Grammys, earned a star on Hollywood Boulevard and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and is often presented as the typical American Rock success story.

Though he has gone deeper and a bit more experimental in his later years, Tom Petty’s most identifiable musical alliance is with Heartland Rock – a white working-class subgenre popular in the 70s and 80s, typified by “traditional” rock-band electric guitar and drums tinged with mandolin and harmonica, and accessible blue-collar lyrics that tell of the social, physical, and economic isolation experienced by those struggling to recapture the american dream in a post-industrial decline. And sure enough, like the subgenre’s other famous practitioners – Bob Seeger, John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, and John Fogerty among them – though he has enjoyed renewed popularity among the younger set in recent years, Petty’s laconic drawl can most commonly be heard on bar-room jukeboxes and classic rock radio, alongside southern and country rock artists such as the Eagles and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Like anybody, I guess, I find Tom Petty’s vast catalog of hit songs familiar from the very first chord. And though my struggle to love what can only be called “distinctive” voices is well known to our regular readers, as a child of the eighties, a pop culture aficionado, and a fellow pursuant of the dream, though I don’t own a single Tom Petty album, I nonetheless find comfort in the constant presence of his direct and often softly cynical songbook.

I’m not alone in this. The blogs were awash with Tom Petty covers back in 2008, when his superbowl halftime show was the talk of the town – a sure indicator that both bloggers and modern singer-songwriters share my appreciation for Petty’s apt portrayal of both the American heartland and the American heart. Here, in celebration of the coincidence of American excess and Floridian paradise which I experienced in his home state, we gather in the best and folkiest, from the mellow to the madcap – many posted previously here and elsewhere; all well worth repeating, and easily downloadable as a single mix. Enjoy.

Covered In Folk: Tom Petty

• Tony Furtado: Running Down A Dream [2014]

• Caitlin Canty w/ Darlingside: Wildflowers [2016]
• Daisy Mayhem: Wildflowers [2010]

• The Weepies: Learning To Fly [2015]

• Lost Leaders: Climb That Hill [2012]

• Lipstik: Yer So Bad [2008]

• Melora Creager: American Girl [2006]
• Frank Turner: American Girl [2014]
• Ballad Of Crows: American Girl [2015]

• Keller & The Keels: Mary Jane’s Last Breakdown [2006]

• Jane Kramer: Down South [2016]

• Pat Green: Even The Losers [2012]

• The Gibson Brothers: Cabin Down Below [2008]

• The Del McCoury Band: Love Is A Long Road [1998]

• Jim Boggia: Walls [2003]
• Kasey Anderson w/ Anna Foster: Walls [2009]

• Kathleen Edwards: A Face In The Crowd [2004]

• The Northstar Session: Crawling Back To You [2012]

• Missy Higgins w/ Brett Dennan: Breakdown [2009]

• Mark Erelli ft. Jeffrey Foucault: Alright For Now [2007]

• Hi Ho Silver Oh ft. Leslie Stevens: Time To Move On [2011]
• Jon Shain: Time To Move On [2007]

• Logan Grant: You Don’t Know How It Feels [2015]

• Sharon Bautista: Something Good Coming [2014]

• Sam Bush and Kathryn Caine: Square One [2013]

• Natalie Imbruglia: The Waiting [2015]

• Holly Figueroa O’Reilly: Free Fallin’ [2011]
• Kings Of Convenience: Free Fallin’ [2001]
• Kyle Studtmann: Free Fallin’ [2015]

• Hands ‘n’ Wood: Into The Great Wide Open [2015]

• Bhi Bhiman: Don’t Come Around Here No More [2013]

• Paul Cannizzaro: Don’t Do Me Like That [2013]

• Donovan Roberts: You Got Lucky [2008]

• Dawn Landes: I Won’t Back Down [2008]
• David Baerwald: I Won’t Back Down [2006]
• Ian Johnson: I Won’t Back Down [2012]
• Johnny Cash: I Won’t Back Down [2000]
• Company Of Thieves: I Won’t Back Down [2012]
• Benjamin Francis Leftwich: I Won’t Back Down [2012]

• Barnstar!: Handle With Care (orig. The Traveling Wilburys) [2011]

Ad-free and artist-friendly since 2007, Cover Lay Down features musings on the modern folkways through the performance of popular song year-round thanks to the kindness of patrons like you. Give now to support our continuing mission, and receive an exclusive mix of otherwise-unblogged coverfolk from 2014-2015.