Station Archive

Some 30 years ago, while sitting in Sudwerk listening to a young singer on a stool performing popular songs of the day, my companion -- Bill Morrissey, who had mostly done original songs at his Palms' gig earlier that evening -- turned to me and said, "When I was starting out, I did lots of covers too, but never with an Ovation guitar!"

Singer-songwriters, like Bill, often include a cover or two in their sets. A good cover song should seem fresh, almost as if the singer owned the song. On today's show, I included a few instructive examples: Joel Rafael covering Woody Guthrie, Valerie June covering John Prine, and Stan Rogers (pictured) covering Mary McCaslin.