Town Mountain’s new project, “Dance Me Down Easy: The Woodstock Sessions EP,” puts an Americana spin on classic rock songs.
Town Mountain is likely best known for their excellent 2008 cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire,” so it makes sense that their label, New West Records, encouraged them to put together a collection of covers. While I don’t feel any of the songs on “Dance Me Down Easy” capture lightning in a bottle like that cover did, the six-song EP still has plenty to offer for fans of rock and Americana music.
The project was recorded in the barn of Levon Helm, legendary vocalist and drummer for The Band and, later, a solo artist. Helm was a momentous figure in both rock and Americana music, and performing in a space that was so spiritually tied to him was a big factor in this EP’s creation. The project’s title track is a cover from his solo career.
A cover song can fulfill two main functions: to pay tribute to the original song and artist or to transform the song into something distinctive to the cover artist. While one might imagine the genre-switching on this EP would make it fall towards the latter option, these songs consistently straddle the line, never straying too far from the source.
For those unfamiliar with Americana, the genre refers to music that incorporates any combination of American-originated musical genres: country, rock, blues, bluegrass, gospel, jazz, rhythm and blues, and American folk. The term casts a wide net, but in the case of Town Mountain, the main ingredients are country and bluegrass with a bit of rock. All this to say: these covers and the originals may seem disparate on the surface, but they’re all branches of the same musical tree.
Alternate instrumentation and, in the case of the last three songs, switching out British accents for southern twang don’t lead to any radical departures. While some may see this as unambitious, I don’t think it’s necessarily a flaw. It seems to me the goal of this EP was to have fun playing some covers in a special studio, not to try to reinvent or outdo great rock songs.
It would be redundant to review this project track by track because they more or less all bring me to the same conclusion. Every song translates well into Town Mountain’s style. They are excellent musicians who unsurprisingly do justice to the original songs. I also see little use in critiquing lyrics that have clearly stood the test of time.
The vocal performances are solid and may be the greatest differentiating factor. Levon Helm and Mick Jagger (lead singer of the Rolling Stones) are untouchable vocalists as far as I’m concerned, so it seems almost unfair to judge the singing on these covers against the original renditions of Helm’s “Dance Me Down Easy” and the Rolling Stones’ “Sweet Virginia.” However, Town Mountain’s version of the latter does have the distinct advantage of delivering the line “Got to scrape the [expletive] right off your shoes” with a southern accent.
Though they don’t belong to the same era, the original vocals on both The Kinks’ “Strangers” and Dire Straits’ “So Far Away” are what I would describe as a hypnotic British whine. (I don’t mean ‘whine’ in a derogatory sense, though my American ears may subconsciously imagine Brits in a constant state of complaint.) It feels superficial to linger so long on accents, but one of the more interesting aspects of this EP is the difference it makes in delivery despite singing the songs in a similar manner.
The cover of J.J. Cale’s “Devil in Disguise” is to me the least transformative and least successful track. It’s a perfectly passable cover if you love the original, but as someone who isn’t particularly drawn to it, there’s nothing in Town Mountain’s version to win me over.
The odd duck on this EP is “Flannery’s Reprise,” due to it being a take on the traditional bluegrass instrumental “Flannery’s Dream” rather than a rock cover. It’s not a cover of any particular artist, but compared to the version I’m most familiar with, John Hartford’s, it’s spacier and incorporates a rock sound.
While no cover on this EP is a revelation, the project is a succinct showcase of Town Mountain’s talent. Coming in at a swift 22 minutes, “Dance Me Down Easy: The Woodstock Sessions EP” is more than worth the time of any fan of rock or Americana music.
