Original songs plus covers: Red Molly at Madison Square Park


I saw a fabulous independent Americana-style female trio, Red Molly — who are also my friends — play at Madison Square Park in Manhattan the other night on an impossibly blue-skied, sunny and warm early evening.

What’s great about this group (Carolann Solebello, Abbie Gardner and Laurie Macallister)– besides their fantastically tight harmonies and kick-ass dobro, banjo and acoustic bass playing — is their blend of original songs written by members of the group and carefully selected cover songs, all in the roots/folk/Americana style they’ve become well-known for.

All three are extremely talented songwriters — in fact, Abbie recently won the folk award in the prestigious John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Their original songs, such as Laurie’s “Beaumont Rest Stop,” are at such a high level that I’ve often been unable to tell which were their tunes and which were covers from such well-known songwriters as Gillian Welch and Susan Werner.

One of my faves was their closing number, an acapella tune from their latest CD of a Susan Werner song called “May I Suggest.” Just a sampling of the lyric:

May I suggest
May I suggest to you
May I suggest this is the best part of your life
May I suggest
This time is blessed for you
This time is blessed and shining almost blinding bright
Just turn your head
And you’ll begin to see
The thousand reasons that were just beyond your sight
The reasons why
Why I suggest to you
Why I suggest this is the best part of your life

I think it’s terrific when songwriters add songs from other artists in their set. It’s a goal of mine to do more of that!

  • Meg

    Their version of "May I Suggest" almost always brings tears to my eyes…

    Finding great covers and then reworking them so they sound like your own, but faithful to the original, is challenging, but the pay off is well worth it. I have been working on that myself.

  • nes

    A couple of the covers that I've performed myself were originally sung by men. I find that this helps in having an 'original' voice with the cover, as there's intrinsically a difference between male and female vocals.
    I've heard covers that vary so much from the original that at first I don't recognize the song, but that still capture the essence and beauty of the original (and sometimes even more so). At the same time, there are times when a cover resembles the original, but has slight differences that distinguish it. Great covers can have the same rhythm as the originals – maybe with a slightly different arrangement, a change in tempo or varying harmonies. In any case, it's definitely exciting and rewarding for me to work with covers along with creating original tunes…