Artist Feature: Cover Songs (Second Edition)

As I mentioned in our previous Cover Songs Artist Feature, one of my favorite podcasts is Coverville. When an artist interprets the work of another artist, we can hear a lot of interesting things. We can experience in a new way how great the songwriting of the original piece was. We can understand something about the emotional and musical impact of the song on the artist performing the cover. We can also hear what is unique about the artist playing the cover, especially if they transform the song into something entirely new and personal. Below I have gathered some covers that I’ve come across while listening to Strymon tagged posts. I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.

First up: Guitarist Guy Coutu begins with lovely sparseness and soon moves into percussive, rhythmic fingerstyle playing behind Mike Charette’s heartfelt vocals in this intimate live duet performance of “Stand By Me.”

https://youtu.be/S6xKsOYjfrI

Kush Upadhyay’s steel string fingerstyle version of Michael Landau’s “Family Tree” abruptly switches to an electric version about halfway through the video. Two versions for the price of one!

Claudia Pantalone sings a moving version of  Tim Buckley’s “Sing a Song For You,” with a fantastic accompaniment by Michelangelo Brandimarte on electric bass.

Check out the lovely vocal harmonies and beautifully minimal guitar (incorporating delay for keeping the beat) in Lynx Sessions’ treatment of “Sorry” by Justin Bieber. You might feel like hugging somebody after you watch this one!

Well, this one is downright amazing to watch. Joseph Patrick Moore delivers a truly virtuosic, richly-layered live looping performance of “32 Flavors” by Ani DiFranco. Masterful and musical use of effects and a couple of different bass guitars.

Ray and Lauren make a couple of Telecasters sound really great (and will definitely make you smile) with their instrumental cover of “Hold Back the River” by James Bay.

If you have not heard Renetta Jane sing before, you are in for quite a treat. With a perfect acoustic guitar accompaniment from Michał Szczęsny, this cover of Coldplay’s “Fix You” is something special.