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Cover Lay Down
coverlaydown.blogspot.com
1
Folk covers of familiar songs. Reimagined versions of folk songs. Because in the folk tradition, music belongs to the community.
#763420 in All

Single Song Sunday: Barbara Allen (Meg Baird, Colin Meloy, Laura Cortese & 10 more!)

Traditional death ballads aren’t a dime a dozen on the modern papcharts, but they’re a recognizable form among the folkways. Most deal frankly with unrequited and/or unequal love and its ...

2 days ago

Mother’s Day Coverfolk (On learning to love the self in the other)

I’ve written about my father several times here on Cover Lay Down, citing him as a friend and fellow folkfan whose companionship I cherish, especially now that I have children of my own. I̵...

14 may 12

Covered In Folk: Tim Hardin (Luka Bloom, Mark Lanegan, Karen Dalton, Seth Avett & 13 more!)

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-c...

06 may 12

(Re)Covered, vol XXV: New coverage from Rose Cousins, Ryan Adams, the Stringdusters, Rani Arbo & mo...

We’ve got an unusually large post today, both to acknowledge a growing backlog of recent projects from familiar, beloved folk artists, and to make up for our recent vacation-driven absence from...

29 apr 12

Caribbean Coverfolk: Pop, Reggae, Jazz & Folk Songs of the West Indies

As noted yesterday, we’re in Puerto Rico for an extended vacation, lazily hopping around the eastern side of the island in fits and starts. Old San Juan was my kind of town, and the perfect por...

19 apr 12

Vacation Coverfolk: Where We’re Going To (Postcards from the past, songs from the present)

Sunday, April 15 Dear Reader, Traditionally, when yours truly takes off for other climes, I leave behind a feature set or two of place-relevant coverage. But we’re off to San Juan in the mornin...

18 apr 12

Covered In Folk: The Bee Gees (Feist, Shawn Colvin, Ray LaMontagne, Chumbawumba, & 12 more!)

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 f...

15 apr 12

Let My People Go: Songs of The Exodus (Musical Metaphors of Power, Privilege, and Oppression)

Before we were slaves in Egypt, we were Joseph’s brothers and their wives, working at the right hand of a seemingly benevolent pharaoh. But as more modern freedom movements have reminded us ove...

07 apr 12

Damien Jurado Covers: Springsteen, Nick Drake, Ronnie Dio, A.P. Carter, & more!

Seattle indie singer-songwriter Damien Jurado is an experimentalist at heart, a literate musician who built his career on a cult following, early collaborative work as an indie rock band member with ...

03 apr 12

Tributes and Cover Collections: Pesky J. Nixon, Nick Cave, Josie Little, Peter Mulvey revisited, & ...

It’s finally Spring, though the warm winter shuffled our sense of season a bit this year. And just as the turning of the calendar has brought an early bloom of daffodils and crocuses to the gar...

24 mar 12

Anti-Festival Coverfolk: The Best of Couch By Couchwest 2012

South By Southwest, the hippest multi-day, multi-venue industry bash in all the land, has finally drawn to its inevitable conclusion, and all across the country, artists and music bloggers are stumbl...

19 mar 12

All Folked Up: Heavy Metal (folk covers of seminal metal bands from Iron Maiden to Metallica)

I think of metal and its various forms only peripherally, as some other tribe’s music, acknowledged as valid yet neither understood nor experienced from the outside. But because metal rose in t...

17 mar 12

On Making Time: Temporal coverfolk, and a plea for support

As noted on our Donate page, here at Cover Lay Down we insist on remaining ad-free and non-profit – the better to focus our attention and your support on those artists we tout week in and week ...

11 mar 12

The Coverfolk Smorgasbord: New and new-found delights from the mailbox and beyond!

A coverblogger’s inbox is always full, and though much of what we receive is off-genre or original, following the threads of inspiration is often a fruitful pursuit. But regardless of source or...

06 mar 12

Snowsongs, Redux: late coverfolk in praise of snow

I had other plans last night – dance class chaperonage and an early fast food supper out with the kids; a long school committee meeting; a late-night blog entry that bowed to a particularly del...

01 mar 12

Mary Black Covers Dionne Warwick, John Sebastian, Nanci Griffith, Bob Dylan & more

Though her emergence dates back to the mid-seventies, Dublin singer Mary Black doesn’t write much of her own material; instead, her work is firmly grounded in the rich Irish tradition of folk d...

26 feb 12

(Re)Covered, vol. XXII: more covers of and from Daniel Johnston, The Smiths, Stephen Foster, Chris ...

It’s been a long haul these last couple of weeks, with new projects and courses to teach at work, and budget season fast approaching at the local school committee table. School vacation was can...

23 feb 12

Covered In Folk: Bill Monroe (covers from folk rock to revival, acoustic jazz, and indiefolk)

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 yea...

20 feb 12

Covergrass, Redux: The Joe Val Bluegrass Fest, Feb 17-19, 2012

Once again, we’re off to spend the weekend at the always amazing Joe Val Bluegrass Festival out at the Sheraton in Framingham, MA. This year’s lineup is stellar as always, with young sens...

17 feb 12

Peter Mulvey Covers “The Good Stuff” (Radiohead, Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Jolie Holland, U2 & more...

Peter Mulvey was one of the very first artists we wrote about here at Cover Lay Down, way back in October of 2007; at the time, we claimed that Mulvey has the versatility of the true cover artist, an...

13 feb 12

‘Tube Thursday: New Video Cover Projects take on the Guy Clark, Grateful Dead, and Leonard Cohen so...

It’s not the newest trend in the webiverse. See, for example, Hangin’ Out On E Street, the Bruce Springsteen-solicited covers project we noted way back in February of 2009, or The Stand I...

10 feb 12

Making Peace With The Wild Things: A Prayer For My Students

Student grades are due tomorrow, but we went to church anyway – we had to sing, and anyway, after two years of semi-regular practice as a Unitarian Universalist, I have come to a place in my li...

06 feb 12

New Artists, Old Songs, Vol. XXIV: Digging deeper into The Far West, Robby Hecht, Gregory Paul, Adn...

When we started our New Artists, Old Songs series back in 2008, the goal was to feature otherwise-unknown artists who were just starting to hit the proverbial radar. And though we still try to balanc...

02 feb 12

Single Song Sunday: If I Needed You (18 solo, duo, & full band transformations of a Townes Van Zand...

Apocryphally, If I Needed You came to Townes Van Zandt wholesale, in a dream, wherein he envisioned himself a famous folksinger, and the song as his biggest hit. When he awoke, he wrote the song down...

28 jan 12

Covered In Folk: Warren Zevon (Jill Sobule, Shawn Colvin, Adam Duritz, David Lindley & more!)

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 c...

25 jan 12

SoundCloud Saturday: Streaming coverfolk from Frazey Ford, Brian Vander Ark, Bon Iver & The Chiefta...

Winter has finally arrived in mid-New England, dropping just enough snow on the ground to keep us inside while the kids head out for sledding and snowplay. And so we spend a mellow Saturday at home b...

21 jan 12

Reinventions: The evolving sounds of Tim and Nikki Bluhm and Jim Moray

A two-fer today, folks: a British artist and a California couple matched in their versatility and the breadth of their journeys, similar in the way they pull on and play against the older sounds of t...

19 jan 12

Jimmy LaFave covers: Dylan, Guthrie, Townes, Springsteen, Joe Ely & more!

Texas-born, Oklahoma bred singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave is a regular on the Northeast festival circuit; I’ve managed to catch his act many times in the last two decades, on main stages and sid...

15 jan 12

YouTube Thursday: Noah & Abby Gundersen cover CSNY, Feist, and Dylan with family & friends, and ste...

You know how sometimes something wonderful and new just falls out of the ether into your consciousness, and changes your life? Ever had it happen twice in a 24 hour period? I didn’t go looking ...

13 jan 12

Mailbox Mayhem, 2012: January releases from Charlie Parr & John Statz, plus new Steely Dan and Dyla...

The January release holds a special place in the ebb and flow of artistry; though it runs the real risk of being forgotten by the time it comes to make our year’s end lists, it also finds the m...

09 jan 12

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