Tom McDonald

I grew up and got schooled in New England, hitch-hiked on a whim to pre-Grunge-era Seattle, never left. Took to designing software for authors and publishers. Raised two kids and quite a few chickens on a island in Puget Sound. Taught myself guitar and banjo and formed a covers band. I help run a map store; here’s an issue of our newsletter. I favor British tv comedies and novels by Cormac McCarthy.

May 132025
 

Neil Young tribute albumIf you have an abiding interest in Neil Young, or regularly check in on this site, you have heard it by now: the new Neil Young tribute album is out. Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young, Volume 1 has got some big names on board, and a confident, semi-official vibe about it (thanks in part to the subtitle, A Benefit for the Bridge School). Volume 2 is officially unannounced but said to be forthcoming from Killphonic Records.

We’ve been spreading the news of the project in recent months by looking at each of the singles released ahead of the album. But enough teasing: the record is here, and it’s time to opine.

Let’s jump right to the point: Volume 1 is a solid collection to kick off the series. Long may it run.

Is there room for improvement in Volume 2? Of course, and we’ve got some suggestions.
Continue reading »

Apr 112025
 

Post Malone Tribute Nirvana
Post Malone has triumphed as a rapper, a rocker, a pop star, and a country artist. If there’s a solid core within this multiplicity, it’s that Malone is, in essence, a Kurt Cobain fanatic.

It’s literally written on his face: the Nirvana song title “Stay Away” is inked into his forehead. A portrait of Cobain occupies Post’s upper arm. “WHATEVER” is tattooed across his left palm, “NEVERMIND” across the right. If the world needs a celebration of the iconic grunge band, Malone’s the man to bring it.

Post Malone: A Tribute to Nirvana makes its debut on Record Store Day 2025. But the only thing new about the release is its yellow vinyl format. The album’s 14 songs are drawn from Malone’s COVID-19 lockdown performance in April, 2020. That show was a live-streamed fundraiser for COVID victims; the new album is likewise a benefit, with all proceeds going to the nonprofit organization MusiCares. (Specifically, the donation goes to the Addiction Recovery/Mental Health arm of MusiCares, which is in itself a nod to Cobain.)

Joining Malone for the all-Nirvana set were Brian Lee on bass, Nick Mac on rhythm guitar, and Travis Barker of blink-182 fame on drums. And what a set it was! With a righteous cause and a hard-hitting band, Malone seemed large and in charge. On top of his vocalist/guitarist frontman duties, he emceed the fund-raising operation; between songs Post gave shout-outs to the more generous donors, and kept one eye on the chat window for any big names signing in. (Both Courtney Love and Krist Novoselic entered the chat at different points.) Host Malone did it all, and he did it in a dress (yet another bow to his hero). All this without forgetting a single word or chord in the hour-long set.

For the album release, of course, we get only the songs themselves, not the party-down atmosphere, the banter, the beer breaks, the false starts. But that’s kinda the bad news: an electrifying show, a sense of something happening, doesn’t always get encoded into the record grooves. Songs can lose their juice when taken from their context. The livestream raised over $4 million in donations–a huge success–but A Tribute to Nirvana, the record, amounts to little more than a solid if somewhat perfunctory outing.
Continue reading »

Feb 112025
 

That’s A Cover? explores cover songs that you may have thought were originals.

If Led Zeppelin had made Physical Graffiti a single album rather than a double, “Boogie with Stu” would not have made the final cut. “Filler” is a dismissive term, but that’s what it was. (Of course, one band’s filler is another band’s gem.) The song was just a spontaneous jam, really, recorded in 1971 on an out-of-tune piano as they worked on Led Zeppelin IV. But when Zeppelin suddenly had an extra album-side to complete in 1975, they cleaned up the old recording and tossed the result onto side four, practically as an afterthought.

“Boogie with Stu” is treated like an afterthought, too, in those always-interesting and usually contentious discussions about Zeppelin covering and plagiarizing other artists. Sure, let’s talk “Dazed and Confused” and Jake Holmes, “Whole Lotta Love” and Willie Dixon, “The Lemon Song” and Chester Burnett, and all the other cases. But the discussion rarely gets around to the strange case of “Boogie with Stu” and Ritchie Valens. Or if it does, it’s only as an afterthought yet again.
Continue reading »

Feb 072025
 

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

“Well it’s story time again,” says a young Tom Waits to a live audience in July, 1975. So begins his intro to “Big Joe and Phantom 309,” Red Sovine’s country hit from 1967. But his listeners were already involved in a story that night: they were collectively pretending to be in “Raphael’s Silver Cloud Lounge,” a seedy LA nightclub.

In truth, they were seated in The Record Plant, the illustrious Los Angeles recording studio. Waits had moved studio equipment aside, dragged in a few tables and chairs, set up a makeshift bar, and invited some friends over for a show. The opening act was a strip-tease. With the correct vibe established, Waits recorded his third album that night, Nighthawks at the Diner. And it included his first departure from original material with “Phantom 309.”
Continue reading »

Dec 042024
 

One Great Cover looks at the greatest cover songs ever, and how they got to be that way.

Neil Young rarely records other people’s songs. In live appearances it’s another story–he seems game to cover anything–but in the studio it’s Neil Young material that Neil wants to record. One exception to the rule is ”Four Strong Winds” by Ian & Sylvia from 1963. Young recorded his own version for his Comes a Time album (1978). It’s not just any old cover–it’s one great cover with special meaning to Young himself.
Continue reading »

Nov 222024
 

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!

As tradition has it, the jazz singer usually comes with piano accompaniment. Often, as with Diana Krall or Nina Simone or Norah Jones, the crooner is the keyboardist. The deep-voiced vocalist Cassandra Wilson broke this template back in the 90s. Her most successful music centers on the acoustic guitar, and features acoustic stringed instruments as main ingredients in the mix. If this unusual sonic palette makes Wilson’s music stand out, what makes it stick is her embrace of genres outside the jazz idiom.

Wilson first gained recognition in the mid-1980s as a founding member of the avant-garde M-Base collective. M-Base artists explored intricate rhythmic layering, free improvisation, and absorbing various African and African-American musical traditions, including newer branches like hip-hop. But Wilson soon struck off in her own direction, issuing several albums under her own name. Then she transformed her approach, and in 1992 she signed on with Blue Note Records (EMI).

It was at this point she expanded beyond jazz standards (and her own compositions) by covering folk, country, Delta blues, and pop material. From Hank Williams to U2, The Monkees to Van Morrison, Muddy Waters to Joni Mitchell, she was on it. At the same time, she began to feature instruments that were largely excluded from the jazz bandstand: classical guitars, octave guitars, resonators, banjos, a violin, a bouzouki, and a mandocello. Wilson redefined what jazz could sound like. She partnered with individualistic musicians (like Brandon Ross, Kevin Breit, and Charlie Burnham) all phenomenal artists who could play with imagination and with extended techniques. When Wilson herself played guitar it was usually in a “wack tuning” (to quote her own liner notes).

Not one to cling to a format or formula, she continued to evolve beyond her breakthrough Blue Note records (she left the label entirely in 2010). She even brought piano back into the mix, bringing to light some the best players of the next generation, including a young unknown named Jon Batiste. In some phases she focused on musical forms from Italy and from Brazil, or veered back into a more mainstream jazz approach, as on projects with Wynton Marsalis (the Pulitzer-prize winning Blood on the Fields production) and album-length tributes to Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. In the current decade Wilson’s been very quiet. She turns 70 in 2025, and if we are lucky she will re-emerge with more of her beguiling music to share. Continue reading »