Under the covers with Fleetwood Mac

[vivfox]

I have highlighted the cover songs but in order to download them you must click on the link to this blog which is located at the bottom of this article


Confession time, folks: I’ve started and subsequently deserted no less than three separate entries on the songs of Fleetwood Mac since starting this blog over fifteen months ago. My problem, I think, is that although the relative plethora of good covers out there underscores both the cultural impact and the strong songwriting of Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsay Buckingham, and Christine and John McVie, I have an almost comprehensive ambivalence about their original work.

On the one hand, I have always had a secret shame for the catchy beats and classic pop production of their radio hits. Either there’s something good there, or under all the high-falutin’ language and claims to a carefully honed folk sensibility, my tastes are about as lowbrow as they come. It’s hard to get past the sneaking suspicion that both may be true; up until now, this self-loathing that results seems to have scuppered earlier attempts to come to terms with the subject at hand.

On the other hand, due to a unique combination of age and suburban top-40 radio experience, my first experience with Fleetwood Mac consisted of an entire pre-teen summer unable to escape the lite rock horror that is Little Lies. I have an intellectual sense that 1977 Grammy-winning, multi-platinum album Rumours is a seminal record, as well as perhaps the best songwriting showcase for the major players who defined the Fleetwood Mac lineup for their greatest decade. But because I will forever think of the songs from that album as perfect pop pap, allied forever with the background sound of classic daytime rock radio and the inescapable image of all that horrible eighties hair, I have trouble taking Fleetwood Mac seriously as performers.

Today, then, a thesis tested: I have long believed that no song can be fundamentally overcovered or overplayed — that the greatest coversongs have the power to cause us to reconsider good songs despite what may be a perfectly honed bias, or even a well-developed loathing. Ladies and gentlemen: the coversongs of Fleetwood Mac, here to prove that good coverage can be the salvation of song.


Some artists are surely worth the effort. But when your first experience with a band is their mid-career cheese, and that cheese becomes entangled with your own perfectly natural attempt to distance yourself from the dorky, Top 40 self of your mid-adolescence, it’s hard to approach their better, earlier works with the respect that it deserves.

For example, while the strong songwriting talents of Fleetwood Mac are evident in their coverage, locking the too-catchy beats back into my echolalic skull seems a high price to pay for the privilege of sharing their coversong. Still, despite myself, great covers of Fleetwood Mac songs pile up. Their songs have been reinvented so well, by so many, years after dismissing them for Rhiannon and other classic rock radiopap, I’ve recently found my way to giving their vast and diverse songbook a second chance through the performance of others.

Interestingly, for me, with a very few notable exceptions — that stunningly raw cover of Gold Dust Woman that Hole came out with in the heady grunge days of the late nineties, both the Smashing Pumpkins and Dixie Chicks versions of Landslide, and of course Black Magic Woman, which many people have no idea was not actually by Santana — the successes here are almost universally the ones which both slow down and strip down the original production dynamics, leaving us with something delicate, intimate, and powerful — just the song, and nothing more.

This may be my personal bias at work, of course - I may be favoring the least pop among all covers in order to mitigate whatever self-applied bias I have against that part of myself that can’t help but nod his head along with Rhiannon. But notably, Shawn Colvin’s cover of The Chain doesn’t hold a candle to the Gnarls Barkley cover Susan shared with last week, coming as it does from the most lounge-act moment of her career.

Still, whether its your kind of thing or not, the team of Fleetwood, Buckingham, Nicks, and McVie wasn’t just another ABBA. The production may be a product of its age, but the songs themselves speak of pleasures and pain, loves lost and lusted after, which ring eerily familiar in the history of anyone who has ever made a claim to humanity in all its messy nuance. And nowhere is this more evident than in the monster success that was Rumours, an album produced amidst — and lyrically reflective of — the dissolution of the various marriages and relationships which framed the band

Today, then, we delve into some recent coverage, in an attempt to both chase my own ghosts, and to try to consider the songs as successful pieces outside of their original cultural context.


The covers here fall across several folk types. Singer-songwriter solo takes on the Fleetwood Mac canon are increasingly numerous; as evidence of their potential success, I’ve selected two favorite versions of Songbird which we first posted back in September as a kick-off to our partnership with Denison Witmer, and his oft-partner Rosie Thomas. Late vocalist Eva Cassidy brings her distinctive bar-based bluesfolk approach to the same song gorgeously, too. Tony Trischka and Alison Krauss‘ bluegrass cover of World Turning is a stroke of genius, illuminating the song from the inside out through a comprehensive genre-switch reinvention; it stands against master guitarist Leo Kottke’s version marvelously. And Snow and Voices turns Go Your Own Way into a frozen landscape, a highly atmospheric grungefolk ballad of a very modern type.

More recently, the indie tendency towards bedroom covers — that is, hushed lo-fi productions, rough around the edges, which sound like they were recorded in a single take just down the hall from a slumbering family — has produced a few stellar examples of the genre, most notably Vetiver’s ragged acoustic folkrock take on Save Me A Place, and these versions of Fleetwood Mac staple Dreams: an out-of-print cover from ambient electrofolker Sandro Perri, a take from The Morning Benders which was found floating ’round the blogs upon its freebie release a few months ago, and this typically broken live take from indie folk fave Cat Power.

Taken as a set, the songs belie my bias, showing a diverse influence, and providing a potent look at some universal themes. May the covers assist with my conversion, and make fans of us all.

•Cat Power: Dreams
•The Morning Benders: Dreams
•Sandro Perri & Friends: Dreams
•Vetiver: Save Me A Place
•Snow & Voices: Go Your Own Way
•Eva Cassidy: Songbird
•Denison Witmer: Songbird
•Rosie Thomas: Songbird
•Leo Kottke: World Turning
•Tony Trischka & Allison Krauss: World Turning

Today’s Bonus Coverfolk offer a few live takes on songs originally released as solo work from members of Fleetwood Mac. For some reason, I have less baggage here than I do for the above — a surprise, given how most of us know Holiday Road as the theme song to the National Lampoon’s Vacation series.

•Matt Pond PA: Holiday Road (orig. Lindsay Buckingham)
•Of Montreal: Trouble (orig. Lindsay Buckingham)
•Melissa Etheridge: After the Glitter Fades (orig. Stevie Nicks)


12 Responses to “Covered in Folk: Fleetwood Mac
(covers from Vetiver, Eva Cassidy, Leo Kottke, Cat Power +9 more!)”
1.Matthew
February 7th, 2009 at 7:00 pm There’s another great cover of Songbird by Joel RL Phelps and the Downer Trio. It’s on the Inland Empires album.

2.Tim Walters
February 7th, 2009 at 8:17 pm I once saw Amy X. Neuburg do a great version of “Tusk” with taiko drummers, but unfortunately she’s never recorded it.

And hey, I like ABBA!

3.A Big Batch of Fleetwood Mac Covers…Including The Morning Benders Take on “Dreams” « Rock God Cred
February 7th, 2009 at 8:33 pm [...] Click here to go to CLD to check a big batch of Fleetwood Mac covers…including The Morning Benders take of “Dreams”…Cat Power, also covers this classic as well. Rosie Thomas covers “Songbird”, Leo Kottke covers “World Turning”…plus their are more FM covers. [...]

4.FiL
February 8th, 2009 at 12:07 pm That Tony Trischka & Allison Krauss version of “World Turning” is quite nice!

I’m a bigger fan of the early Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac, but I was nine when “Rumours” came out and thanks to its ubiquity on AM pop radio, that album seeped into my DNA. It’s the point where everything came together for them, and the production had not yet overtaken the songs.

BTW, check out French Kicks’ cover of “Trouble” from last year’s “Covers” EP. Not as stripped down as the Of Montreal version, but much catchier to my ears.

I also have a live version of “Monday Morning” (with a bit of “Second Hand News” thrown in) from Falcon Ridge in 2005, though it’s a bit ragged.

Now how about some covers of the Bob Welch-era Mac?

5.Kelly
February 10th, 2009 at 9:16 pm Thank you Especially love the Morning Benders’ cover of “Dreams”

6.Bruce
February 12th, 2009 at 11:02 pm I wouldn’t go as far as the writer above to confess to liking ABBA, but I became far more obsessed with the Greatness of Fleetwood Mac after a letter to the editor that changed my life. The moron writer intimated that F.M. wasn’t a real band. I already knew that I really liked them, but then started listening more closely and heard the Pink Floyd-esque qualities I’d missed before.

7.Harriet
February 16th, 2009 at 1:24 pm I must admit that despite the general ugh factor of the supergroup dynamics, I really loved Fleetwood Mac when I was a girl and rumours is a boss album. You are right though, listening to a swath of covers makes one appreciate their strengths as songwriters. The Denison Witmer cover of Songbird is quite a nice and that Snow & Voices track upends you a bit. Great post!

8.Rod
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:56 pm Anna Ternheim’s cover of the ‘lite rock horror’ Little Lies is startling - as is the whole Shoreline EP

9.boyhowdy
February 22nd, 2009 at 3:07 pm Wow — nice call, Rod! Thanks!

10.Rod
February 27th, 2009 at 4:26 pm Yet another fine Mac cover is Nora O’Connor’s version of Stevie Nicks’ great song ‘That’s Alright’ on her ‘Til the Dawn’ album.

11.(Re)Covered VII: More covers of and from Sometymes Why, Eilen Jewell, Emma Beaton, Fleetwood Mac and more! — Cover Lay Down
March 1st, 2009 at 12:49 am [...] this weekend; Valentine’s posts live)Love, Complicated: Coversongs for the Bittersweet HeartCovered in Folk: Fleetwood Mac (covers from Vetiver, Eva Cassidy, Leo Kottke, Cat Power +9 more!)Pierce Pettis Covers: Mark Heard, Jesse Winchester, Guthrie, Dylan, and [...]

12.(Re)Covered XII: Fleetwood Mac and The Beatles + video covers of Paul Simon and Hank Williams from Falcon Ridge ‘09! — Cover Lay Down
August 26th, 2009 at 10:44 pm [...] Meanwhile, Atlas Sound — an apparent solo subsidiary of indie hipster band Deerhunter — brings relative obscurity Walk a Thin Line on a journey from slow echoey folkrock to anthemic coda. It’s like what you’d get if Jane’s Addiction made folk music. Finding tracks like this in the mailbag is just one more reason why I love the blogging life. For more Fleetwood Mac covers, don’t forget to check out our original feature on the songs of Fleetwood Mac. [...]

http://coverlaydown.com/2009/02/cove...fleetwood-mac/

[PenguinHead]

Originally Posted by vivfox

I have highlighted the cover songs but in order to download them you must click on the link to this blog which is located at the bottom of this articlehttp://coverlaydown.com/2009/02/cove...fleetwood-mac/

A very entertaining and informative blog!
What a wonderful, insightful writer you are; reeking of intelligence! I really enjoyed reading it. Thanks for posting it.

[vivfox]

Originally Posted by PenguinHead

A very entertaining and informative blog!
What a wonderful, insightful writer you are; reeking of intelligence! I really enjoyed reading it. Thanks for posting it.

I didn't write this. I just found it on the web. I don't have the patience to write something that long.