Cover Wars: Spanish Moon Edition

The Bridge: Shockingly, this band from Baltimore is the only entry this week that has a horn player. When I selected the song this morning, I’ll be honest – I thought a lot of the versions I was going to find were going to struggle in the vocals department. But, the lead singer here and in many of these this week, does a fantastic job. Check out the whole show on The Archive

Dave Matthews & Friends: Dave yielded lead vocal duties to Trey for a few songs on the Dave & Friends tour (he sang Cripple Creek every night). More rarely (more like every other night) he would also sing some Little Feat. Even if you hate Dave Matthews, this band was pretty ripping and at least you get to hear Trey sing, “Whiskey and bad cocaine” a number of times. Grabbed this show off of a torrent (The Rochester 12-20-2003 show) at antsmarching.org – go check it out (you gotta register first to access their downloads page).

Fans of the DMB know that for years Dave has frequently sung a coda of Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken at the end of his own song Crash into Me.

11-7-2002, recorded in Seattle for the World’s AIDS Day broadcast:

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Gov’t Mule: There’s some great mimicking of horn sounds done with the guitars here. It sounds like Warren running through a Leslie, but it’s hard to tell having not been there. Helping out on this extended take is Ian Neville, Ivan Neville and Matt Grondin. As I mentioned in the intro, this one was a brand new seed on bt.etree.org. Jump on now and you’ll get a very fast download.

Leftover Salmon: This show comes from late 2001, just a few months before original banjo player Mark Vann would lose his battle with cancer. As you hear in the intro, these guys seem to really enjoy playing some Little Feat! Check out the whole show on The Archive

New Monsoon: Like I said at the beginning of the write-ups, I was impressed with all of the vocal performances this week. Tackling the works of Lowell George is no easy task and these guys also pull it off very well. The banter in the intro about “having a good year so far” is because it was shortly after Midnight NYE 2005-2006. Check out the whole show on The Archive

The Radiators: The Radiators are currently celebrating their 30th Anniversary tour – which means they’ve been at it longer than I have been alive. My personal congratulations to The Radiators, they have been on Cover Wars a couple of times and it’s always a treat to hear their spirited renditions. Their organ player always has great work on the drawbars. This is the opening track of a three-setter they did for Mardi Gras in 2000. Check out the whole show on The Archive

Robert Palmer: This track is coming to you off of Palmer’s third studio release, Some People Can Do What They Like. That was in 1976, just two years after the release of the original. Interestingly, the “Whiskey and bad cocaine” lyrics do not appear on the original Little Feat version, but they do on this one…on the live version of Waiting For Columbus…and every single cover of this song I have ever heard. Many of the members of Little Feat appear on this and other Robert Palmer studio releases.

That’s all I’ve got this week. I can’t find any old school footage of Little Feat doing this tune while Lowell George was still with us, so here’s a couple of other hits:

Dixie Chicken:

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Fat Man In The Bathtub:

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