In the Spotlight: Dave Matthews Band

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Oct 152024
 

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!

For those that celebrate, the closing gigs to The Dave Matthews Band’s Summer Tour, titled Labor Dave Weekend, are an annual highlight. Three days of raucous fandom mark the transition to Fall in the Gorge, Washington State. Those in The Pit had an extra thing to celebrate this year. After a fan movement failed to get the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, the band was elected this year and their enthronement takes place this weekend. Those fans will have had just enough time to recover from the weekend to get to Cleveland!

The Dave Matthews Band is an American phenomenon, in several ways. Across nearly 3500 live shows that the band and their spinoffs have played, not much more than 100 DMB events have occurred outside North America, and these shows are often populated by American fans on pilgrimage to the host country. Their seven consecutive number-one albums in the US includes records that never touched a single chart overseas. They have, of course, generated a billion dollars of concert ticket sales off the back of legendary, epic live shows. Their presence on the list of highest-grossing touring artists ever is a testament to the energy they can generate.

Almost everything in DMB’s world is vociferously debated somewhere.  The role of cover music in the sets is one of those matters. They have included hundreds of cover versions in their sets over the years, demonstrating a vast knowledge and appreciation of popular and not-so-popular music. When you have a world-class, jazz-infused drummer, a rock bassist, a roots-minded guitarist and a vocalist born overseas, not to mention touring musicians with decades of experience, you are going to have a lot to draw on.

Still, there are a group of people who get agitated every time a cover is included in one of their sets. The argument seems to be that, with a vast back catalog of their own, why do they need to play the music of others? That is understandable in some ways. If you made out with someone hot in your college dorm to a DMB song back in the ’90s, and that song doesn’t get played in the set, you miss the chance to fully relive that moment, perhaps even if you are at that concert with the hot person. Every set is different, but your memories stay the same. The covers that the band have played over the years have a rich heritage and history, and the band are not going to stop playing them, and Matthews himself is going to announce and perform them with enthusiasm regardless.
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The 50 Best Covers Performed at Woodstock

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Aug 152019
 
Woodstock Covers

You know the story – on August 15, 1969, an estimated 400,000 people coalesced on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in upstate Bethel, New York, for “3 days of Peace & Music” at a music and art fair that ultimately defined a generation. Today marks the golden fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock, and to celebrate the occasion, the staff at Cover Me are going “back to the garden” to wrap you in the Top 50 covers performed by the legendary artists who graced the stage during that long weekend.

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Young Jerry Garcia Covers “Long Black Veil” in 1963

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May 182018
 
jerry garcia long black veil

Jerry Garcia was not exactly known for his talkative stage persona. Though the legendary singer/guitarist of the Grateful Dead was adept at providing quality sound bites during interviews, whenever he stood before a large stadium crowd he was more likely to tune his guitar than engage in the typical “Hello, Cleveland!” stage banter. That’s what makes his recently released cover of “Long Black Veil” so intriguing. On May 4, 1963 while performing the song at Top of the Tangent in Palo Alto with his then-wife Sara (Ruppenthal) Garcia, Jerry was practically Mr. Chatterbox on stage.

“We had a request, or at least I did, after this last set, to do a song called ‘Long Black Veil,’ which is a modern country song,” he told the crowd, during a lengthy introduction to the tune. “But it’s pretty anyway, even at that. It’s not even a folk song, or anything. It’s just a song. Somebody wrote it and it’s on records with electric guitars and everything. But anyway, it’s a good song.” The track was included on the new box set Before the Dead, which chronicles Garcia’s live recordings with various groups in Northern California from 1961 through 1964. Long before the days of YouTube, somebody was seemingly always following him around with a tape recorder.

In early 1963, “Long Black Veil” was hardly the standard it is today. Originally recorded by country singer Lefty Frizzell in 1959, it had only been released commercially by a handful of artists at this point. The most notable version was by folk revivalists the Kingston Trio in 1962. Many of the more famous renditions had not yet hit vinyl. Joan Baez’s live recording would not be released until November 1963 and Johnny Cash did not put out his cut until 1965.

Garcia’s take on the song is simple and straightforward. He plays it, strumming his acoustic guitar without a psychedelic solo anywhere in sight. His voice strains a bit as he attempts to hit the high notes. Listening to Garcia sing, it feels as if he does not quite know who he’s supposed to sound like. While the song is by no means an essential addition to the Garcia canon, listening this track, and in fact the whole collection, is a bit like reading the original scroll of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Though hardly a finished product, the music provides a fascinating window into an artist developing and honing his craft.

Click here to listen to more covers of “Long Black Veil.”

In the Spotlight: Gillian Welch

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Sep 132013
 

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!

Gillian Welch is a yankee. There, it’s said. One would have a hard time discerning it from her mix of folk and bluegrass arrangements, but there’s a Big Apple right there on her birth certificate. So let it be noted that, when compared to some “legitimate” country music popularized and sung by those born and bred in the South, with their auto-tuned cartoonish absence of substance, an overabundance of shiny objects and pyrotechnics, and some ghastly redneck rap thrown in, it’s obvious that birthplace alone has little influence on how traditional or great country music is.
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Live Collection: Ryan Adams

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May 132011
 

Live Collection brings together every live cover we can find from an artist. And we find a lot.

Remarkably prolific by today’s standards,  Ryan Adams has released 12 albums (some solo and some with The Cardinals) since the breakup of his seminal alt-country band Whiskeytown in 2000. Not like your typical modern artist with three or four year gaps between releases. He’s also made friends in high places, including Elton John, Willie Nelson and Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead. Not just a hard-working studio musician, Adams also tours extensively, with an upcoming European tour marking his return to the stage after his 2009 ‘retirement.’

Never one to hide his influences, Adams regularly includes cover songs as part of his live show. We’ve compiled a selection of his covers for our latest Live Collection. Remember this is no one-album artist. Given his back catalog, Adams chooses covers that, for the most part, really mean something to him. Country and ‘70s rock figure heavily in his choices: five songs associated with Gram Parsons, three classics by The Rolling Stones, and the obligatory Neil Young nod. Continue reading »