In general, I don’t buy into the whole “cover of a cover” thing.
When someone professes to cover a cover, I usually find they’re just imitating a cover artist’s arrangement without bringing anything new or fresh to the table. In the process, they often lose the connection to the original that led the first cover artist to re-arrange it to begin with.
But there are some covers that are so definitive and so distinctive that they deservedly spawn covers of their own.
Johnny Cash’s superb version of Bruce’s “Further On (Up the Road)” is one such cover. (You might have heard Bruce spin it on his From My Home to Yours radio show this past week.)
Mary G, the front man for The Spring Folk Orchestra, was inspired by Cash’s cover to arrange a version of his own. As with the best covers, Mary makes the song sound fresh and new.
What I love most about this version of “Further On (Up the Road)” is how we can clearly hear the influence of both Bruce’s and Johnny’s arrangements, yet it stands as a distinct arrangement all its own.
This is a superb cover. For more original music and covers from The Spring Folk Orchestra, check out their YouTube page here.
