The threads that entwine early country music and American folk music are clear and bright in the folkways. Early country came from folk, coupled with other Southern strands that would lead to the blues; before the folk-revival canonization of radio and festival genres in the 50s and 60s, the folk community welcomed country artists as their own. But although it is common for modern folk musicians to pay tribute to the early blues and country songs of depression-era radio, to certain subgenres such as outlaw country, and to the crossover songs and songwriters of the [...]
We're in the midst of a short Spring series featuring this year's early tributes and cover compilations, thanks to an unusually strong crop of those full-album sets which so often stand as the coverlover's archival foundation. Last Friday, we kicked off our series with a look at The Music Is You: A Tribute to John Denver , sharing three tracks from the album and a Covered In Folk mixtape of relatively recent folk homage for comparison; today, we explore two different approaches to The Everly Brothers from The Chapin Sisters and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Dawn McCarthy, [...]
Canadian alternative country singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith 's down-to-earth approach to the universe comes from a rural farmstead childhood and a train-hopping past. And so, where other folk artists walk with their fans, Eaglesmith takes trains: both literally - Eaglesmith is known for his rail tours - and as a dominant subject, setting, and metaphor for a narrative approach more broadly grounded in engines, their various rural incarnations, and the escape they embody. Eaglesmith's delivery is raw as the bawdy stories her tells between songs in live performance: couched in a voice that [...]
The Appalachian ballads of American folk singer and songwriter Ola Belle Reed echo through modernity: best remembered for penning Bluegrass standard High On A Mountain , the Smithsonian honoree is a respected songwriter and radio personality in the annals of country and traditional folk music, both for her interpretation of traditional song and for the hundreds of original tunes she wrote during her four decade career. Add a yearly festival held in her name in her native North Carolina, and note that Amy Helm and friends named their band in her honor, and it's [...]
For Radiohead , as with so many bands formed in high school, it is the team that matters first and foremost, in no small part because of the tight and adept skills each band member has developed throughout their co-evolution and ongoing collaboration. Guitarist and composer Ed O'Brien is celebrated for his distinctive use of effects pedals, and for the harmonies he brings to help create and sustain Radiohead's rich, layered sound; the versatility of drummer Phil Selway has been a key component of their evolution as a modern band, especially as they have moved on to adopt [...]
Steve Earle made his name early and adeptly on both sides of the singer-songwriter label, dropping out of ninth grade to study the music business, moving to the heart of country in his twentieth year after a hard-scrabble teenage musician's life in Houston to pen mid-career hits for Carl Perkins, Patty Loveless, Johnny Lee, and others in the Nashville scene, all the while making his own path through the wilderness of rockabilly, country, and folk. Throughout, he emerged as a poet and political activist, even as he struggled as an outlaw and an addict, and Wikipedia is [...]
I'm of an age where Tim Hardin 's Reason To Believe is heard first and foremost in the voice of a late-career Rod Stewart - an inauspicious echo for a song so powerful, and so well-covered. But a good coverwatcher learns to spot trends among the liner notes as he gathers in the sheaves. And so, with today's culminating feature, we come to honor a gradual and growing awareness of the work of the sixties and seventies singer-songwriter among a generation of artists and fans born after his rise and fall from grace [...]
Our thoughts and prayers go out this weekend to 62 year old Australian-born pop superstar Robin Gibb, founding member and long-time lead singer of disco trailblazers the Bee Gees, who is reportedly fighting for his life in a London hospital after a long struggle with cancer. In his honor, we're recovering a June 2008 feature which mines my origin as an audiophile and pays tribute to the seminal work of the Bee Gees through an expanded set of folk-tuned coverage. Gibb and his brothers may have spent their careers on the far end of [...]
Musical visionary Bill Monroe, who got his start alongside brothers Charlie and Birch in the depths of the great depression, and subsequently performed as a solo act and bandleader for over sixty years until his death in 1996, was not just the father of the music we call bluegrass; he was its most prolific writer and disseminator. As composer and arranger, he created or recreated hundreds of songs; as progenitor, he found, groomed, and composed and performed alongside 161 Blue Grass Boys in a half century before sending them back out into the world to spread the gospel. [...]
Musical visionary Bill Monroe, who got his start alongside brothers Charlie and Birch in the depths of the great depression, and subsequently performed as a solo act and bandleader for over sixty years until his death in 1996, was not just the father of the music we call bluegrass; he was its most prolific writer and disseminator. As composer and arranger, he created or recreated hundreds of songs; as progenitor, he found, groomed, and composed and performed alongside 161 Blue Grass Boys in a half century before sending them back out into the world to spread the gospel. [...]
Happy Birthday to Warren Zevon, whose graveled voice I never truly appreciated until his final album was released just before his death in 2003. Known for his pithy, sardonic wit in song and social commentary - enjoy every sandwich , his oft-quoted insight on dying which would later become the title for the first of two posthumous tribute albums, is a terse encapsulation of that observational mastery which shines through his back catalog - the man who released just twelve studio albums in 35 years was nonetheless a respected mainstay of the rock circuit, celebrated by his [...]
As with many of our more folk-oriented Covered In Folk subjects, I discovered the work of Dougie MacLean through two primary sources: through my father, who handed me one of his albums over a decade ago, and through label-watching, after discovering the same poignant song twice over, in separate female voices, and realizing that neither of them had written it. The song in question is Caledonia , the Latin name for Scotland, and as its matronymic title implies, though it treats its subject as an anthropomorphised object of desire, its lyrics truly [...]
A short post by Darius over at Star Maker Machine late last week rang a bell; I hadn't realized that Danny O'Keefe had both penned and first performed The Road , which most of us know well through its coverage on Jackson Browne's definitive album Running on Empty, but I did recognize his name from the songwriting credits for Well, Well, Well - a song often attributed to co-writer Bob Dylan alone, but first recorded by Maria Muldaur. Following the thread through the stacks, I found more than I bargained for: [...]
An unusual double feature today, combining our two most popular focusing strategies: covers of, and covers by, a folkworld artist with whom the average folkfan is only partially or anecdotally familiar. As with all those who we tout, our feature subject deserves to rise above the constant chatter, to be celebrated for his songwriting and performance. But in this case, the man is so prolific, it seemed appropriate to go for the omnibus approach. To be fair, though I had long planned to take on the collected coverage of Bonnie [...]
One of the biggest challenges of coming of age in the late eighties is that some of the best pop performers of the post-punk/new wave era were already past their musical prime when I discovered them, invariably through radio hits that echoed their earlier work while somehow managing to sound derivative and old-school amidst the rising tide of majestic yet ultimately ephemeral heartland rock, bouncy pop, early grunge and smooth R&B which characterized the era. Case in point: I went through a brief Elvis Costello phase when I was in high school, [...]
Lucinda Williams is surely better known - or at least more easily recognized - for her ragged heartbroken delivery and emotional way with a guitar than her songbook per se. But as we noted back in May of 2009, when we featured her interpretations of other peoples' songs , it wasn't always the case: her first Grammy win was as a songwriter, for Mary Chapin Carpenter's 1992 performance of Passionate Kisses . In many ways, of course, Williams' is an unusual path towards stardom: though her 1979 debut [...]
It's surely more understatement than hyperbole to suggest that Nick Drake was a man before his time. The Cambridge dropout who found Dylan and dope more engaging than his studies certainly impressed the members of Fairport Convention, who would go on to support his 1969 debut Five Leaves Left in the studio, but he only confused British audiences, who found the chronically depressed insomniac anxious and disengaged, and his ecologically-grounded poetics and organic chorus-less songs completely anathema to the world of sea shanties and traditional brit-folk with which they were familiar. [...]
After 25 Grammy Awards and just about as many albums, Stevie Wonder needs little introduction. Signed to Motown Records at the tender age of 11 after being discovered by Ronnie White of the Miracles, the blind-from-infancy multi-instrumentalist's first two albums didn't make much of a splash - his sophomore outing, a tribute to the songs of Ray Charles, is notorious for the poor match it makes between "Uncle Ray's" world-weary lyricism and "Little" Stevie Wonder's sunny, high-pitched innocence - but his subsequent work as a composer, singer-songwriter, and arranger is legendary. [...]
The blogs are abuzz with the impending anniversary of John Lennon 's birth; the man would have turned 70 this Saturday, and in keeping with the digital world's everpresent bent towards relevance and immediacy, the faux-urgency of the date seems to have started an avalanche of tribute. And though we're not usually the bandwagon types, it's hard to ignore the way the Lennon story has come to define both the end of a social era, and the sad coda to the Beatles' breakup - and the impact his songs and spirit have had on music, both in [...]
I first discovered Ontario-based singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn via 1987 singles collection Waiting For A Miracle, a double album set whose bright aboriginal cover art called to me from my father's record collection. Even to my untrained adolescent ears, the seventeen year songspan told a story of a potent guitarist and prolific artist who had slowly turned from sparse acoustic folk to something urban, electrified, and politicized. And though I found myself favoring the middle of the album for its contemporary, catchy pre-rock melodies and accessible yet spiritual imagery, his astute, often poignant observations [...]
Cover Lay Down
Daft Punk Random Access Memories (Alternate Version)
Rock it Out! Blog: “The People’s Review of Random Access Memories“
[stream] Smith Westerns // 3AM Spiritual
The Dodos – “Confidence”
Death Engine // Amen EP
