New Album! The Ouija Board

Covers Share on Tumblr

Covers are a tricky business.  Before the the Rock/Pop era, songwriters were only very rarely also the singer.  After the early years of Rock n Roll, songwriters more often performed their own material, and it became corny and amateurish to do covers, you only did covers to learn your craft.  The idea of "covers" brings to mind wedding bands and lounge acts.  But even the Beatles and Stones did covers well into their professional careers.  Some notable covers from the 60's were magnificent transformations of the originals: Vanilla Fudge doing The Supremes' "Keep Me Hanging On," The Who's version of "Summertime Blues," and the staggering "All Along The Watchtower" from Dylan, redesigned by Hendrix.  Then for decades it seemed unforgivable to do covers due to our romantic investment in the shaky concept of "authenticity." In May of 1987, I saw Husker Du play a 30 second punk version of the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song, "You're Gonna Make It After All" on the Today show when Gumble and company did a live broadcast from Minneapolis because, of course, MTM was supposed to take place in Minneapolis.  I thought it was ridiculous, but also kind of cool.  Today we live in the Age of Irony, so loads of bands cover each other's songs, and hipsters dig it.  Witness Ryan Adams covering T. Swift's entire 1989 album, and Father John Misty "covering" Ryan Adams covering Swifty, in the style of The Velvet Underground - the mind reels, the stomach churns. As recently as this September, Drowned In Sound posted a playlist of 89 Cover Songs.  Many of the videos posted on Stereogum are well known bands doing unexpected covers.  However, covers are still a minefield of bad taste.  Just think of the entire run of The Voice, or American Karaoke, I mean, American Idol, where we've witnessed the senseless slaughtering of hundreds of familiar favorites.

For myself, I love to do covers, but they have to suit my voice and, somehow or other, my style.  I'll only do a cover if I think I can do it in a way that will be musically refreshing, not just weird for the sake of it, but in a way that will be challenging, yet still entertaining.  So, I've done a sythpop arrangement of Dylan, a shoegaze version of Charli XCX, and a Steely Dan styled Beatles tune.  I like to change some of the chords around too because varying the harmony from the original can put the melody in a new light.  I don't have a logical explanation for doing covers, except it's fun, it's a break from working on my own music, and they seem to get a good deal of attention on my Soundcloud.  My takes are usually so left-field though, they may be mistaken for parody, but I'm not making fun or being satirical.  If a song is good, it will stand up to a variety of approaches.

Here are the cover songs I've recorded over the last couple of years in reverse chronological order.  I've preceded my versions with the originals for comparison:

************************************************* *************************************************
*************************************************

 
 *************************************************

 

 *************************************************

 
************************************************* 

 

************************************************* 



 *************************************************