One day last week, I was greeted by the sound of someone playing a serviceable rendition of Billy Joel’s “She’s Got A Way” on the piano in the lobby of the Mercantile Center. Not one of my favorite songs, but I stopped and listened for a moment, before going on about my business.

This is, overwhelmingly, how most workaday musicians make their living: Playing covers of famous songs in bars, restaurants and other public spaces. Just look at the propensity of cover and tribute bands playing around the region in the past few weeks, playing the music of the Rolling Stones, the Who, Van Halen, the Beatles and more.

Local singer-songwriter James Keyes has a full songbook of original material, but knows he has to lean on a familiar crowdpleaser once in a while, saying, “It depends on the crowd. Good crowds are willing to listen but some gigs you really gotta coddle them and soften them up with some stuff they know, otherwise it’s torches and pitchforks.” To which singer-songwriter Lovina replies, “Torches, pitchforks and ‘Freebird!’”

Country-flavored singer-songwriter Sean Ryder, who recalls someone asking him to play the Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps,” says he’ll play 75% to 80% for a solo bar gig, 100% if he’s playing with the band Backyard Swagger. Sarah Fard, who performs as Savoir-Faire, says she plays six to 10 in a three-hour set, including jazz standards. There are exceptions — vocalist Tyra Penn only sings jazz and blues songs, while others play few or none at all.

And of course, there are a lot of ways to re-purpose another musician's work: You can play the song straight, like you hear in a movie soundtrack. Think Echo & the Bunnymen covering the Doors' "People Are Strange" in "Lost Boys." Maybe you personalize it, shift the genre or the perspective, maybe the gender of the persona. Maybe you translate it into another language, or mash it up with another song. Maybe you parody it, "Weird" Al-style. Extrapolating it a bit further, maybe you sample it, or remix it, turn it into something entirely new. That's big in the hip-hop world.

Still, it makes one wonder: What makes a cover song tick, makes it more than a soulless karaoke ghost of the original? And perhaps more importantly, what’s lost when those original songs aren’t getting heard? There are numerous ways to answer those questions, but the most fun way seemed to be to solicit local and locally connected musicians to cover randomly assigned songs by their colleagues. Mind, I have a history with this sort of thing, arranging “Great Cover Song Challenges” that had musicians covering the likes of Phil Collins, Air Supply and Madonna. But this was something different, and ultimately far more personal.

Trading Places

“I'm all for stuff like this,” says singer-songwriter Amanda McCarthy of New Hampshire, who ended up covering Carlin Tripp’s “Time Is On Our Side.” She regularly takes part in a show of local musicians covering each other, so this prospect didn’t faze her. Others were more reluctant.

“I was intimidated,” said Worcester poet Tony Brown, of the Duende Project. “I mean, I know some of these people. What if we screw it up?” Trey Holton, of the hard-core band River Neva and Eurydice, the electronic duo with his wife, Amanda Holton, says, “We were terrified because … the artist was going to hear our renditions of their songs. Amanda and I tend to rework our covers and it was a fear of ours that our stylistic choices wouldn't do the original justice in the artist's eyes ... or possibly our own.” They ended up with local folk favorite Matt Robert’s “Won’t You Take Me There.”

Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys didn’t have time to record a cover, but they offered up their song “Walls,” which was snagged by the Duende Project. Indeed, a lot of artists who were not in a position to make a recording were happy to supply songs, balancing out the fair number of artists who sing and play music, but don’t write. My Silent Bravey offered “Hideaway,” which went to local artist J Hams, and the Marshall Pass offered their song “Abilene,” which was covered by Nashville singer-songwriter Sumiko.

“I was so excited by the mystery of the whole thing,” says Broken Toys member Edrie. “Who would get our track? Would they hate our song? What would they do with it?”

Most of the artists involved approached the project with a mix of enthusiasm and trepidation, such as local country artist Stan Matthews, who covered McCarthy’s "Elephant in the Room." “I think it's a great idea to reinterpret a local songwriter's work," he says, “but I was petrified to go outside of my comfort zone and cover an award-winning songwriter's work.” He also covered “Rocketship,” by his friend Amazing Dick.

On the other hand, local musician Doug Geer “thought it was a terrible idea. Mainly because our songs are relatively — or in my case completely — unknown and listeners wouldn’t have that back-of-mind familiarity for comparison. Boy was I wrong and gladly so.”

The Song Remains the Same?

One thing that became quickly apparent as the project got underway was that every musician works differently. Musicians were asked to provide a recording of the song being played, and if possible, lyrics and chords. Some had sheet music, some didn’t. Geer gave Keyes his song, “Train Whistle Cry,” which only existed as lyrics. “I was surprised when I got only the lyrics,” says Keyes, “but kind of excited when I realized I had complete freedom to craft music to them.”

Southern California artist Jaimes Palacio thought local singer-songwriter Kim Jennings “In The Valley Of The Shadow” “seemed right up my alley: rock with a tinge of darkness. The kind of song I would actually buy if I heard it somewhere.” He transformed the song into an offbeat video, which is his regular medium. Ryder says he instantly related to 33 Leaves’ “Lonesome House,” calling it, “Melancholic yet rockin’.”

“I knew right away I wanted to strip the arrangement to the bone and let the lyrics carry the weight of the emotion," he said. "Yet it was important to me to keep the frame of the song, the chord progression and the tempo. That became the challenge.”

Matt Robert got Mauro DePasquales’ “Duende is Dying,” which only existed as sheet music, but Worcester poet Jenith Charpentier, collaborating with local musician-poet Sou Macmillan as Fishtank, didn’t just get the lyrics and chords to Ari Charbonneau’s “Light the Fire,” she also got an instructional video on how to play the chords, which Charpentier appreciated. “I'm a poet with a guitar I don't know how to play yet and I knew I would be collaborating with a musician — but I totally bought a capo and learned the four chords in this song and I can play them all, but not in tempo yet or switching between them faithfully without looking at my hands, but I kind of love that this is totally the first song I can play at all.”

Charpentier’s poem “Alice” went to Johanna Imhoff, who thought at first that her work was cut out for her, but that fear turned to excitement after she saw a comment from Charpentier “saying she hoped it would get chopped up in ways that she didn't expect, so I felt really free to do that. An even more outre poem, “Statesmanlike,” by Uxbridge-turned-New Mexico poet Rich Boucher, was handled with industrial flair by local artist Itoarazi. One-time Worcester poet Morris Stegosaurus, performing music as Epistolary, had his quirky “Axolotl” get a pop makeover into “As Infants We are Infinite,” by 13-year-old California singer Katyana Hall.

Jennings says she cried when she first heard Ryder’s “Small Town Blue.” “Broken hearts, alcohol abuse, drunk driving and resulting death, and suicide all in under 5 minutes,” she says, “it was an emotional ride of sadness, lost hope, and regrets. So I wondered: how can I perform this song and get through it without sobbing through each take and feel what I’m feeling and really honor this song?”

And of course, while they were exploring their new musical discoveries, the musicians were acutely aware their own work was being examined just as closely.

On the Other Foot

“I was DEEPLY curious,” says Brown. He didn’t know musician Michael Gutierrez-May at all, even though he lives in Brown’s hometown of Uxbridge, so he wasn’t sure what would happen with Duende’s contribution, “Crumbs,” a piece of social commentary that is part poem, part song.

Robert says the experience was “Scary. Songs are personal and really vulnerable.”

Others were more enthusiastic. “I freaking loved the idea,” says local singer-songwriter Lindy Loop. "There is a degree of madness in writing music and a fair amount of vulnerability in writing lyric. I was excited to hear how someone else interpreted the pieces of ‘me’ I dared to share,” in her song. “I Lost You,” which was covered by local jazz artist Brian Sampson.

For Geer, “having another artist cover one of my songs was kind of a bucket list item. Just to step back and see if what I wrote held up without what I brought to the song … The thing about songwriting is you work in the vacuum of your own head. With no real idea if what you are writing is even remotely good. So it was amazing to see someone take what you did and apply their own creativity.”

Charbonneau, concurs, saying, “I was really interested to hear someone cover one of my songs, and then when I finally heard it … Wow. Goosebumps. I felt like Van Gogh walking around in modern day, seeing ‘Sunflowers’ or ‘Starry, Starry Night' on a calendar or a coffee mug, or like how people must feel hearing elevator versions of a song they made. There was that element of feeling out of my body, like a ghost, and also, there was a feeling of pride, like it was worthy of being covered. The rendition was breathtaking.”

Ultimately, the challenge was to tear the songs apart and put them together again in the performer’s own voice and style, and that meant putting self-consciousness aside and getting to work.

J Hams was faced with the fact that the My Silent Bravery song “checks all the right boxes for an adult contemporary radio hit. The chorus — It gave me some boy band (Backstreet Boys, NSYNC) vibes. It seemed fully resolved to me and very optimistic — if not even spiritual ... WHICH AINT MY STYLE! So that in there is where the challenge is. Upon researching the tune more I listened to some additional material from them, fronted by Matthew Wade.”

Worcester Magazine reporter Bill Shaner, also a musician, says he played “Grey” by locals Punk Rock TreeHouse “over and over, singing over an acoustic in my room. Once I got the song down I started playing with it to make my version sound better and/or more ‘me.’ At first it was small things but eventually I changed some chords, and the phrasing of one of the parts. I was nervous about doing that because I didn’t know if it would rub the writer the wrong way, but it felt better when I did it so I kept it. And I made it a touch faster.” Singer-songwriter Ken Macy did much the same with the Casters’ “Simple Things,” saying “I read the lyrics to find out the true meaning and internalized it. Once I listened to it a few times I reworked some of the lyrics and added a few new chords to play it how I would play it.”

Keyes said that, when tackling Geer’s song, “I imagined myself as the singer in a band whose singer would write lyrics like that. I think I had a little advantage being able to write the whole tune though.” Trey and Amanda Holton had a bit of an opposite problem, as their track was “well-written, played, and recorded, so we had great source material to play with. The original was a progressive, slow build that kept adding dynamics as it went. It also told a great, dark story so we wanted to make sure we kept all of the lyrical content intact and in the same structure … Amanda suggested the screaming vocals on the pre-chorus to add to the aggression of our version and found a very creative way of piecing the story together within the different parts of the song. We essentially made a very cool acoustic tune into a groove metal song, which are very contrasting styles.”

The artists were given roughly two months to produce their cover, but life got in the way and some songs were handed over to other artists to transform them entirely. Royalston’s Pariah took Gracie Day’s steamy country song “A Little Closer" and remixed it into an R&B number with a hip-hop beat, and local DJ DjWhizPk took singer-songwriter Keno Capitol's song "Hide and Seek," and remixed it into an edgy "future trap" track. Perhaps the most dramatic transformation was with The River Neva’s song, which was sampled down into a dirty hip-hop beat by Worcester hip-hop producer StuWrites. Then, to take it even one step further, Worcester rapper VOG the Healer laid down an original rap over the beat, resulting in an entirely new song, "We All We Got." The transformation is staggering, especially watching it happen in real time as each artist handed the track off to the next.

In the end, it seemed that, ultimately, the process become one of not just figuring out the song they were assigned, but also finding something of themselves in it, something beautiful they could relate to, and bringing those qualities forward.

Got It Covered

“Usually, we choose covers because we love them to begin with,” says Danielle Staples Magario of Fox and the Dragon, who covered “It’s Our Time” by former Worcester poet Kyria Abrahams. “We want to perform the song in our style but also attempt to ring true to the original where possible. This is easier for us with acoustic songs since we're acoustic. When we cover hip-hop or rock, it gets trickier and sometimes we're forced to change key or rhythm to make it make sense for us.”

All of which begs the question: Does the artist bear some responsibility to the original version when they cover a song. For Geer, the answer is “Yes and no. I mean, in most cases you respect it enough to do it in the first place, but you disrespect it enough to think you can do a better version of it. But my take is — the one thing you need to accomplish when covering a song is to bring something new to it … otherwise you are just doing a bullcrap karaoke version, like ‘Live and Let Die’ by Guns N’ Roses.”

Sometimes, that something of themselves takes the form of styling. Fard says it “depends on the song, the setting, and reason for covering it. At Nick's, for example, contemporary covers are usually done with a new flavor to them, in the tradition of jazz! But something like the Fiona Apple show I did this fall makes me want to try to stay true to the original and bring that specific arrangement to life.”

DePasquale on the other hand, says he absolutely feels a responsibility to the original version and to its composer. "Composing is an intimate process," he says. "An artist reaches deep within their soul and, through the writing process, shares their feelings publicly. It takes a lot of courage to do that. The artist and their work deserve respect.”











