Curtis Zimmermann, Author at Cover Me

Curtis Zimmermann

Curtis Zimmermann works as an advertising sales executive for an academic publisher in Philadelphia. He’s been a music critic, news reporter, financial fraud investigator and spent many years in corporate sales, all the while maintaining a healthy obsession with music history. He first became intrigued with genre-bending covers in college when he stumbled across a used copy of Ray Charles’ box set “The Complete Country & Western Recordings 1959 - 1986.”

In Memoriam: Donna Godchaux-MacKay

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Nov 142025

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

When it was announced that Donna Jean Thatcher Godchaux-MacKay passed away on Nov. 2, 2025, the obituaries and tributes came pouring in, as befitting a Rock N’ Roll Hall of Famer and member of the legendary rock band the Grateful Dead.

The story of her life and work has been well documented. Born in Alabama, she got her start as a professional singer in her teens doing session work in Muscle Shoals and Memphis. In this role, she backed up the likes of Percy Sledge on “When A Man Loves A Woman” and Elvis Presley on “Suspicious Minds” (more on that later).

She and her first husband Keith Godchaux moved to San Francisco, where Donna Jean literally talked their way into the Grateful Dead in 1971. With Keith on keyboards and Donna Jean on vocals, the two were part of the band until 1979. Together they appeared on every studio album of the era. They also performed at many of the band’s most iconic shows, such as Veneta (Oregon) in 1972, Barton Hall at Cornell University in 1977, the Great Pyramids in Egypt in 1978, and the Closing of the Winterland on Dec. 31, 1978.

The best way to describe Donna Jean’s role is to say she was a singer in the band. While she wasn’t a traditional rock n’ roll frontwoman like Grace Slick or Debbie Harry, she did sing lead on a handful of songs, including “Sunrise” and “From the Heart of Me.” She also sang co-lead alongside Bob Weir on classic tracks “The Music Never Stopped” and the live version of “Sugar Magnolia/Sunshine Daydream” on Europe ‘72. She sang backup on countless tunes, putting her stamp on many live performances. Even when she wasn’t singing, she was often front and center on stage, moving with the music, both inspiring and emulating the crowd.

Like all aspects of Grateful Dead lore, her time in the band is a matter of endless debate with Deadheads. Some love her, some hate her. Though she was a great singer in her own right, her voice did not always mesh well with those of other members of the band. This was complicated by the fact Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir weren’t always singing on key (or even the right words). She acknowledged these shortcomings in multiple interviews.

Still, to hear Donna Jean’s voice on a Dead song means you can easily identify the era. As Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann wrote last week: “She was very much woven into the Dead’s tie-dyed tapestry during the ‘70s — and some of those years remain my all-time favorite of the Grateful Dead. Which means that some of my favorite music that I ever made with the Grateful Dead was made with Donna.”
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Good, Better, Best: “Bad Company” (Bad Company)

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Nov 052025

Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.

Bad Company were one of the great “Oh-they-played-that” rock bands of the 1970s. With their heavy blues-rock guitar licks, infinitely-catchy hooks, and bombastic frontman, Bad Company produced a number of the decade’s most anthemic, fist-pumping rock hits such as “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” “Shooting Star,” “Ready for Love,” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy.” However, since they came of age in an era before MTV or digital radio, countless listeners have lip-synced and air-guitared to their music on classic rock radio without having a clue who they were or what they even looked like.

Complicating matters even further, the band is a supergroup featuring members of several other great British rock bands of the era including Mott the Hoople, King Crimson and Free. With Free, Bad Company’s future lead singer Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke scored the hit “All Right Now.” So, they’re easily confused with other bands from the era in sound and swagger. They’ve just got that ‘70s rock band quality about them, for better or for worse.

This year the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is inducting Bad Company, fifty-two years after the group’s founding. Earning this spot, they beat out artists like Phish, Oasis, Mariah Carey and the Black Crowes. The band’s selection is a testament to their longevity, but not necessarily rock fans’ ability to immediately identify the group when their songs hit the radio.

To honor their induction, Cover Me looks at three excellent covers of the one song that is most associated with the band, their eponymous track: “Bad Company.” It was the first song on side two of their self-titled 1974 debut record. It’s a power ballad, with a slow piano intro and a buildup to a climactic chorus. Throughout the decades, it has served as a showcase for singers, from rock to country to metal, all of whom want to live out their rock n’ roll fantasies and dreams.

Here are three covers that stand out.
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Zach Bryan Teams Up with John Mayer for Grateful Dead Cover

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Oct 022025

As both a music writer and a lifelong Deadhead, I had many conversations about the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead when I attended the University of Michigan in the late 1990s. Though Ann Arbor is a notoriously hippie-friendly town, in the aftermath of Jerry Garcia’s death, many of my peers were surprisingly indifferent to the band’s music. Numerous friends, roommates, and even the occasional white dude with dreads, encouraged me to move on and embrace the likes of Phish, the Dave Matthews Band, and the String Cheese Incident. One roommate even went so far as to suggest that the acid-jazz ensemble known as Groove Collective could be a possible successor (spoiler alert: they weren’t).

While people might have been dismissive of the band in the late ‘90s, in 2025 the Dead is alive and well in Ann Arbor. On Sept. 27, country singer Zach Bryan teamed up with John Mayer for a cover of the Dead’s “Friend of the Devil” before a sold-out crowd of 112,000-plus fans at Michigan Stadium.

Mayer, who moonlights as the guitarist and singer for the Dead legacy outfit Dead & Company, opened the show, and then joined Bryan during his set for the cover. Bryan, performing in the round and wearing a Maize and Blue jersey, sang the song as a midtempo country ballad, with some fiddle mixed in.

At first, Mayer stayed in the background as Bryan sang, filling in the gaps between lyrics with guitar licks. Toward the end of the tune, however Mayer delivered a dreamy, multi-minute solo that channeled the Southern rock spirit of Duane Allman more than Jerry Garcia. It was a great showcase for the song in front of what was reportedly the largest ticketed rock concert ever. Jerry might have passed away 30 years ago, but the Dead’s music certainly has not faded away.

In Memoriam: Phil Lesh

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Nov 012024

In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.

It seems only fitting that a band known as the Grateful Dead would have so many songs about death. In fact, whenever a member of the Dead universe passes, there’s no shortage of songs to pay tribute to the one newly departed.

Such was the case with the passing of Phil Lesh on October 25, 2024. In the hours and days afterwards, many bands took to the stage with heartfelt tributes to the Dead’s bass player. Perhaps most notable was the jamband Phish, who, that same night, performed a cover of “Box of Rain,” a song co-written by Lesh and Robert Hunter.

The song holds the distinction of being the last track the Grateful Dead ever performed live before the passing of Jerry Garcia. Lesh added it to the band’s July 9, 1995 setlist at Soldier’s Field because he felt the song “Black Muddy River,” another song about death, was too melancholy to end the show and the tour on.

While Lesh will first and foremost always be remembered for his time in the Dead as one of the most innovative rock n’ roll bass players of all time, it’s what he did in the 29 years after Jerry’s passing that might be his greatest legacy.

Lesh kept the spirit of the Dead’s music alive by playing and collaborating with multiple generations of musicians. He helped ensure that not only would the Dead’s music live on, but that there would be many great musicians to play the music in the band’s open-ended style.

“I continue to seek out multiple musical partners, in a quest for that elusive chemistry that comes and goes as it wishes,” Lesh wrote in his 2005 memoir. “Sometimes ‘it’ happens onstage, or sometimes in rehearsal, but it always leaves me breathless and wonder-struck.”

In the Spotlight: Kool & the Gang

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Oct 142024

In the Spotlight showcases a cross-section of an artist’s cover work. View past installments, then post suggestions for future picks in the comments!

On their 1985 hit “King of Rock,” the future Reverend Run declared: “As one def rapper, I know I can hang/I’m Run from Run-DMC, like Kool from Kool & the Gang.” In retrospect, it seems only fitting that the group that helped bring rap to the mainstream would namecheck Kool & the Gang on one of their biggest hits. Kool & the Gang’s multi-instrumental fusion of rock, pop, R&B, funk and disco, provided the backbone for modern rap. As of this writing, the website WhoSampled.com lists 2053 known samples of their music, and the number will only keep growing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. If you went to a party, dance or club in the ‘70s and ‘80s, odds are that Kool & the Gang was booming through the speakers. Whether you were from New York or Hollywood and wanted to “Celebrate and have a good time,” “Get down on it,” “Get up with the get down,” “Go dancin’,” or perhaps “Reggae dancin’,” they had a song for seemingly every type of occasion. Even today, it’s rare to attend any life milestone event (wedding, bar mitzvah, etc.) and not hear their good-time anthem “Celebration.”

Though the group has not recorded many covers throughout their long career, cover songs were an important part of the band’s origin story. The band was founded in the mid-‘60s in Jersey City, New Jersey by a group of child jazz prodigies that included brothers Ronald and Robert “Kool” Bell. Performing under various names, they got their start playing bars, clubs and events throughout New Jersey in the ‘60s as teenagers. In a 2023 interview with Questlove, drummer George Brown said that would often perform the hits of the day to win over the crowd. It’s a not-uncommon story for many of the world’s greatest rockers.

One can hear elements of these origins on their early albums. Singing with Dee-Lite Records in 1969, the band included a handful of covers on their first few releases. Listening to these songs now, on the eve of the band’s long-overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, provides a fascinating glimpse into their virtuosity as musicians. One can hear elements of just about every style of popular music from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. It’s easy to imagine them as members of the house bands at Motown or Muscle Shoals.

In their early years, the band were masters at emulating other people’s music, even if they had not quite found the sound that would make them superstars. Listen to their past, and you’ll hear why their future was indeed a “celebration to last throughout the years.”

Author’s Note: The group would later release a Christmas album in 2013 that contained several covers, but we’ll save that for another time and instead focus solely on the early years.

Georgia On His Mind: Kane Brown Covers Hoagy Carmichael Classic

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May 292024

When I was a young kid growing up in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s I was obsessed with The Flintstones. I would watch reruns nearly everyday after school, so I was constantly bombarded with mid-20th century pop culture references. Some made total sense to me, like secret agent Jay Bondrock or “Bug Music” with the Four Insects. Others took decades for me to decode.