Cover Lay Down

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.