Cover Me Q&A: What is your favorite cover of a deep cut?

Welcome to Cover Me Q&A, where we take your questions about cover songs and answer them to the best of our ability.

Here at Cover Me Q&A, we’ll be taking questions about cover songs and giving as many different answers as we can. This will give us a chance to hold forth on covers we might not otherwise get to talk about, to give Cover Me readers a chance to learn more about individual staffers’ tastes and writing styles, and to provide an opportunity for some back-and-forth, as we’ll be taking requests (learn how to do so at feature’s end).

Today’s question, courtesy of staffer Hope Silverman:

What is your favorite cover of a deep cut?

Curtis Zimmermann

The members of Black Sabbath have been immortalized as the founding fathers of heavy metal. But in their classic era in the early ‘70s they were considered a psychedelic blues band, more similar to the sounds coming out of San Francisco than what we think of as metal. The track “Planet Caravan” from the 1970 album Paranoid is a notable example of the band’s many different musical directions. It’s a dreamy folk ballad. The only thing “heavy” about it is the bongo playing. Ozzy Osbourne’s voice is unrecognizable as it’s layered with echoey-processed effects. Though a deep cut in Sabbath’s catalog, the track has inspired several covers over the years. One of the standouts is Pantera’s rendition from their 1994 album Far Beyond Driven.

In recent years, bluegrass guitar hero Billy Strings has taken to covering the song in his live shows. He first introduced it into his repertoire in 2019 and continues to play it on occasion. One of the notable renditions is the 13-minute version he performed in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 2023. With all of the effects on his acoustic guitar, when he’s picking out the intro, the song feels more like a cover of Pantera’s rendition than Sabbath’s. He uses a fair amount of echo on his voice as well, but not enough to dull out the lyrics. But when the solos begin the track takes on a life of its own.

As with many of Strings’ jams, the song is filled with mandolin, fiddle and banjo solos from his bandmates. Strings himself uses it as a showcase for his own playing, which cuts across multiple traditions. He starts off in the bluegrass space and veers into metal territory, then into some quick-stepping alt-country rock. He effectively blurs the lines between so many genres one almost doesn’t know what to call it by the end. Like Sabbath, he might be inventing a new genre without quite knowing it at the time — alt-heavy jam-metal grass, perhaps?

Riley Haas

I love a cover that takes a song and successfully reimagines it in a different context. For me, usually that new context is a new genre. What I really love is when a cover artist reimagines a song in a genre and it just makes so much sense it’s like it was meant to be.

“Up to My Neck in You” is a Bon Scott-era AC/DC album cut with a fairly generic riff, a typically energetic Scott vocal and a fun Angus Young guitar solo. It is so very AC/DC and it doesn’t really stand out – except for the guitar solo – among their 200 or so songs, most of which follow the same general pattern.

Alberta Métis singer-songwriter Sister Ray somehow discovers a completely different side of the song. They sing Bon Scott’s angry and frustrated lyrics with romantic longing that appears nowhere in the original. There’s a slight warble to the longer notes that gives their performance even more emotional resonance. Sister Ray accompanies themself on guitar, with the starkness of the arrangement adding to how pretty the cover is. It’s soulful and kind of folky despite the electric guitar; it works beautifully. And it’s such a far cry from Bon Scott and AC/DC.

Adam Mason

Paul Young… We all know him as the guy who covered soul songs in the early ‘80s, such as “Every Time You Go Away” (Hall and Oates), “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down” (Ann Peebles) and, most famously, “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)” (Marvin Gaye). He was a bit of heartthrob, with baritone voice and spiky hair, who was usually aided in his musical endeavors by the incredible fretless-bass playing of Pino Palladino. He further sang the first line of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” But wait…there’s something else: He recorded a version of Billy Bragg’s Alexandre Dumas-inspired “The Man in the Iron Mask,” after hearing it on the B-side of the folk/protest singer’s 1983 album, Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy.

The Bragg cover was a huge surprise to anyone who purchased Young’s (original) “Tomb of Memories” single of 1985, on which it was the B-side. No blue-eyed soul here. No backing singers. No Pino. Just Young sounding incredibly alone, haunted and gothic as a man kidding himself his partner still loves him, as she persistently goes out on the town and cheats on him. Young’s version comes with an eerie keyboard backing rather than an acoustic guitar, as he slows the song down and voices the real tragedy within Bragg’s lines: “The nights you spend without me / This house is like a dungeon / And you only return to torture me more.” Who knew he could sound like this!?

Seuras Og

I hope gone are the days when any reference to Richard Thompson insisted on describing him as “underappreciated” or “cult favorite.” Even were his audience only the critics who have always favored him, that is still a pretty sizeable crowd. And, with so many of his songs fast becoming standards in Coverland, finding a nominal deep cut is becoming less and less easy to find.

“Blind Step Away” comes not from his early years in Fairport Convention, the fabled folk-rockers he still turns out for regularly, at their annual festival and reunion, in the Oxfordshire village of Cropredy. Nor does it come from his extensive solo repertoire, getting on for 30 discs, depending on whether you include his work with first wife Linda. This comes from his more experimental middle years, newly resident in America, and teaming up with fellow mavericks, John “Drumbo” French, Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser, for French, Frith, Kaiser & Thompson, a cult supergroup for those with ears attuned away from the mainstream. With each contributing songs specially written for the project, together with odd and arcane covers, they lasted two albums. This song came from the first.

In the hands of the not-for-the-faint-hearted four, it isn’t that unconventional a song, by Thompson’s standards, the melody at home with the sort of pastoral folk themes that run freely through his compositions. But you would never realize that, as the arrangement, however, is where it veers away from his standard. An off-kilter percussion pattern leads into some stentorian humming, which becomes unison. The lyric is then spoken rather than sung, spat out in a low snarl. Typically spiky guitar seeps out like an Elizabethan madrigal on peyote. It is decidedly anti-commercial and I can imagine the fun the four of them may have had, extracting anything of overt tune from the concoction. Nonetheless, it becomes hypnotically compelling.

Tabor, an old hand for Thompson songs (the “blessed Richard Thompson,” she calls him), has no truck with such esoteric noodling, and dives straight in for a hook. Dispensing with any of the Gregorian chanting, she has that motif replicated on pizzicato strings. And she finds a melody, where there wasn’t much one, imparting Thompson’s words with her characteristic glacial delivery. Indeed, the tune she uses may or not be an unconscious second tribute to the guitarist, it smacking of his later song, “Pharaoh.” Clearly, any such link is entirely subjective and of my own opinion, but if she had to find a tune, it makes sense to apply one of his. Breaking into strings for the middle eight and beyond, it is a haunting and mystical revisioning. I actually heard her version ahead the original. I doubt I was alone, even if few then went on to buy the source album that provided it.

Mike Tobyn

Healthy patriotism means having a love and appreciation for your home, or adopted, country, but without being blind to other elements that might not be perfect.

The Jam released “Tales From the Riverbank” in 1981, and it appeared as a B-side on “Absolute Beginners,” which did not appear on any albums itself. It was a solid if unspectacular hit in the UK, but did not hit widely elsewhere. The song has become much loved by fans of the band, who are many (and vociferous) here, but overall it has not had much impact elsewhere.

The song captures things that Weller loved about the UK. The title and song evoke the rural England of The Wind in the Willows, a time when England seemed to be more sure of itself. The music is evocative of the psychedelic music of the late ‘60s, a golden period for British creativity and its influence throughout the Western World. Something to be proud of. However, by 1981 Weller’s political mind was beginning to rail against the government of Mrs. Thatcher, and the direction that she was taking the country, and what she was doing towards those ends. That did not fit with his sense of what made the country great. He did not love his country any less, but hoped it could improve itself.

Lynval Golding’s experience of the UK, and its waterways, was different, and his musical upbringing involved different touchstones. Arriving from Jamaica, he spent time in Gloucester, through which the magnificent River Severn flows, and eventually settled in Coventry. That city is part of the British “Midlands” where canals were arteries for British industry. Coventry is linked by canal to Birmingham, which likes to point out that it is a hub for a network of canals which is, by length, greater than those of Venice.

Quantity is not the same as quality. The working canals of Industrial Birmingham and the Black Country can be appealing, but they are not the bucolic banks of a rural pre-industrial idyll. The music that formed Golding’s musical tastes were also not the Kinks or US Soul. It was the Ska of his dad’s generation, and the reggae that he loved. As part of The Specials, Golding took that Ska to new levels. Golding could love and appreciate his adopted country, but his overall experiences were different and, unfortunately, had to incorporate the fact that other people’s “patriotism” did not incorporate his presence.

The Jam and the ska of the Two-Tone movement co-existed happily in the UK musical ecosystem of the early ‘80s, and there were many crossovers and collaborations from people who had similar musical and political leanings. These links have continued as the collaborators and friends have aged, and sometimes matured. This version of “Heatwave” featuring Madness, Paul Weller and Golding shows is energetic and fun, and shows people far more comfortable with themselves than their younger personas.

Gifted is a ska-inspired cover album of songs from The Jam, compiled for charity. As it contains 70 songs, it can incorporate deeper cuts. Golding’s contribution, along with reggae band Contra Coup, is a ska and reggae infused version of “Tales From the Riverbank,” perfectly capturing his experiences of music and water in the UK, whilst nodding to the psychedelic influences that shaped Weller’s original. It is respectful but grows and expands the song, reminding us that there are many ways to appreciate a song, and the country that nurtured it.

Aleah Fitzwater

Everyone loves a good instrumental cover, and what string quartet has recorded more emo/pop-rock deep tracks than the Vitamin String Quartet?

The original “When the Day Met the Night” is from the 2008 baroque-pop style Panic! At the Disco album, Pretty. Odd. Lyrically, we were treated to a poetic, picturesque song about the sun and moon accidentally falling in love. He was barely hanging on, she was sipping tea…

Vitamin String Quartet’s version is Bridgerton-worthy from the start. It begins with a lone instrument, then steady eighth notes which build…and finally, the (singable) melody enters on a rich viola. It is like an interwoven tapestry: Timeless, uplifting. The timbre of the strings and arrangement manage to pepper in just the right amount of darkness that hints at the original lyrics.

Patrick Robbins

With “Pocahontas,” Neil Young somehow fit two centuries of Native American history into four minutes of music. The beauty, the maltreatment, even a surreal spin into a world where Pocahontas, Marlon Brando, and Neil Young discuss the Houston Astrodome – it’s all there. You could spend a week unpacking its truths and not be close to done. It may be too deep for radio – as opposed to the radio-friendly sentiment “Rock and roll can never die” in the opening and closing tracks of its home, the Rust Never Sleeps album – but “Pocahontas” is the very definition of a buried treasure.

Johnny Cash had a long, deep connection with the Native American people, and he was a Neil Young fan. “I like that he can do most anything – I don’t know, I just like him,” Cash said in the liner notes of Unearthed, a collection of outtakes and hits from his Americana sessions with Rick Rubin. “He’s a very intense person, maybe that’s what I like about him, and I like his writing. And if I like the writing, then they go together with me.” So it was a natural for him to cover “Pocahontas,” letting his deep bass plumb the depth that Young’s reedy tenor couldn’t reach. It didn’t make the cut for the Unchained album, mostly for being a grand production where the rest of the album was stripped down. Certainly it wasn’t left off because it wasn’t any good. “It’s a beautiful song,” Rubin said, “actually one of my favorite things we’ve done, and I’m really glad it finally got to come out.”

Mike Misch

Modest Mouse was one of those bands that seemingly had no deep cuts – their fans knew every studio track off every album. Then came “Float On,” Modest Mouse’s single off 2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and the band’s music started appearing on mainstream radio, commercials, and TV shows.

In 2005, Sun Kil Moon, the mostly-solo project of Mark Kozelek, released Tiny Cities, an album of Modest Mouse covers, only one of which came from MM’s recent breakout album. As the story goes, many reviews came in praising Sun Kil Moon’s continued stellar songwriting following their 2003 debut, not realizing the new album was only covers. “Convenient Parking,” from 1997’s Crowded Lonesome West, is a jarring, angular, repetitive track that doesn’t make many Modest Mouse song lists. The short guitar riff repeats over and over, the vocals are fuzzed out or yelled or both, and the wash of noise comes in waves throughout the quiet-loud-quiet 4-minute track. For fans of early Modest Mouse, this isn’t much different from a lot of their stuff at the time and certainly holds up for those with an ear for it; a mesmerizing build and release that can be almost meditative.

Enter Sun Kil Moon. By this, the ninth track on the album, the listener has figured out that Isaac Brock’s lyrics lend themselves quite well to Kozelek’s brand of vocals drenched in reverb and backed by deftly finger-picked acoustic guitar. Every song here seems to bring something new to the table while paying homage to the MM original. “Convenient Parking,” with its slightly uptempo pace and “hard-hitting” guitar plucking, is by comparison a banger. Less than two minutes long, Kozelek runs through the short verse breathlessly, double-tracked vocals way up in the mix. The finger-picked riff is played on an alternately-tuned guitar and the rhythm feels impossibly complicated, punctuated by slides at the end of each meter that turnaround back to the start. Did I try to learn to play this song when the album came out? Yep. Was I close? Nope. Moving on.

The chorus, a strangely vague “convenient, yeah, parking is way back”, gets the Sun Kil Moon treatment, soaring vocals at the top of Kozelek’s range, echoing off the vaulted ceiling. SKM could have done like Modest Mouse and run it back a few more times to get the droning length of the original but instead it’s a short but sweet “what the heck was that?” two minutes dropped into an otherwise unruffling album. It’s a fun change of pace and a nice counterpart to the wild original.

Hope Silverman

I confess that Todd Rundgren’s confessional-quirky and goofy-soulful Hermit of Mink Hollow (1978) is not my favorite album of his. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly fine, and home to a couple of truly gorgeous heartbreakers including the classic “Can We Still Be Friends.” It’s just that half the tracks are strictly B-team Todd, meaning they are okay but not up to his usual heart-squeezing standard. That said, I have an abiding love for Hermit, for despite its overall okayness, it is home to my absolute, all-time favorite TR deep cut, the lush dreamsicle known as “Fade Away.” With its imagery of the sun descending, shops closing for the day and everyone heading for home (except for you and I, who “will stay and watch the sun fade away”), its positioning as Hermit‘s closing track could not be more perfect. “Fade Away” is a world unto itself, a wistful, romantic, vaguely dark and cryptic ode to, well, living, and it’s just so ooh.

Vocalist Raissa Khan-Panni, producer Paul Sandrone and multi-instrumentalist-arranger wizard (and true star) Mark Horwood were the core of the UK band, The Mummers. According to Raissa, the band was inspired by “an obsession to play live at the Albert Hall” and wanted to make “a big, epic, filmic sound.” They did what they set out to on their acclaimed 2008 debut album Tale to Tell, creating glorious technicolor pop songs that nodded to everything from John Barry film scores to MGM musicals to Rickie Lee Jones to the freakin’ circus, a fantastical mix Raissa described to The Guardian as “a motor pile-up of melody” (it is). Adding to the whimsical nature of the project was the fact that the album was recorded in Horwood’s treehouse studio in Sussex, accessible only by a big wooden ladder.

In 2009, not long after the album’s release, Horwood died by suicide.

In 2011, the band released the Mink Hollow Road EP—named after the Rundgren album—featuring music Raissa and Horwood had worked on just prior to his passing, including their version of “Fade Away.”

This cover is very special to me. From Raissa’s soaring vocal to the exhilarating instrumentation, it has always conjured images in my head of a vaguely European, endlessly odd and magical village like the one depicted in the 1971 film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. A place where people of no fixed nationality live in a toy shop of a town near a mystical, mythic chocolate factory, and everything is all performing animals, twinkling lights and brass bands (No, really). The cover is a true celebration of the original, relentlessly joyful with an undercurrent of bittersweetness thanks to Horwood’s brilliant, transcendent arrangement.

The track was released as a single, and while it failed to chart in the real world, it remains number one in my heart, an eternally gorgeous firework/bedtime fairytale in song form.

In an interview with Jo Whiley in 2011, Raissa characterized the band’s sound as “music to make people feel better”. Mission accomplished.

Ray Padgett

The best Bruce Springsteen tribute album you’ve never heard of is called Play Some Pool, Skip Some School, Act Real Cool: A Global Pop Tribute To Bruce Springsteen. You’ve probably never heard of any of the artists on it, either. And, in this case, you may not have heard of the song I’m featuring, “Magic.” A triple-deep cut! The Gresham Flyers’ post-punk version of the title track to Springsteen’s excellent 2007 album made #9 on our list of the Best Springsteen Covers Ever, in the exalted company of artists like Lucinda Williams and Everything But the Girl. As I wrote there, “Sharp and jagged, it boasts echoes of New Order and Interpol. The sound works, and leaves me hungry more for more postpunk Bruce.”

Tom McDonald

The first album by The Gourds, the alt.country band from Austin, TX, came as a revelation. Its tracks alternated between two very different songwriters and voices in Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith. When they wailed and hollered in harmony on each other’s songs–watch out. The band broke rules and conventions and they broke them beautifully, deliberately, and well.

By their 2001 album Shinebox, The Gourds had added banjo and fiddle to their mix, and so sounded more Texan and countrified than ever. And yet they began to ransack the music of other genres and other places: the album sported quirky covers of Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” and Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice,” which got all the attention. Their straight-ahead cover of the overlooked “Two Girls” by Townes Van Zandt was itself overlooked.

At that point I knew, but didn’t love, popular Townes songs like “If I Needed You,” “Tecumseh Valley,” and ”Pancho and Lefty.” Great songs, but they weren’t mysterious or bent in the way the Gourds were bent. “Two Girls” is another thing entirely. Townes gets a little too unhinged on “Two Girls.” Fundamentally, I don’t get it, yet I play it over and over. Questions like “What’s this song mean” and “Who is ‘Jolly Jane’” are probably the wrong questions. Townes is a poet, and as a US Poet Laureate once put it, “A poem is an empty suitcase that you can never quit emptying.”

The song captured me with its enigmatic, Dylanesque chorus:

I’ve got two girls, one’s in heaven, one’s below.
One I love with all my heart, one I just don’t know.

I hunted down the Townes original, and his live recording of it, and his duet with Doug Sahm, and covers by Steve Earle and Rosanne Cash. I still say the best way to hear the chorus is with Kevin Russell and Jimmy Smith crooning together, as a fiddle and accordion strike some wayward off-kilter chord behind them.

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