A coworker recently suggested I learn Greenville by Lucinda Williams, with one small adjustment — he said I could tweak the line “You don’t really love me/you’re not my man” to sing the song from a man’s perspective.

It’s something I’ve run into before. I’ve spent the past year building up my repertoire, trying to have a reliable stock of 500 cover tunes. When I’m pulling from a pool that big, I end up learning more than a few songs by female artists. I play a bunch of songs by women, singing about the men they love (or, more often, the men who broke their hearts). 

I’ve never really messed with song lyrics to match my gender, but I wondered if I was the odd man out. I took a quick informal poll on a musicians’ Facebook group, and in general people said they didn’t change the words. A few people said they would leave the words “as is” if they referred to another individual, but if the singer referenced themselves in another gender, they’d change it.*

But for the most part, people said they left the lyrics as the original artist performed them. Most people who didn’t change the lyrics said it was just too difficult to make the rhythm or the rhyme scheme work with an alteration. A few people said they were trying to faithfully recreate the original, and to change the words would be a disservice to the song. 

For me, I feel like I play better when I can put myself in the song. And maybe that means letting go of a bit of myself so I can more completely embody the song’s landscape. I think playing covers can be challenging to do well, and that means I do a bit of acting mixed in with the singing & the guitar. I want to make sure I’m giving the audience my best performance, and I enjoy changing roles with each tune.

*Honorable mention to the singer who suggested changing every instance of the word “girl” with “squirrel.”

So many non-venues…

A coworker recently took a look at all the stickers on my guitar case, a spacious patchwork in a familiar outline. “Have you played at all these places?” he asked, leaning down to read the collection of breweries, local restaurants & tourist attractions.

No. I have not played all these places. I’m a fraud.

Most of these stickers came from places that don’t even have live music - a restaurant in a Georgia strip mall, a historic cemetery in Philadelphia, an ice cream shop in Montana. I collect them not as keepsakes of past performances, but as more of a travelogue. Some of them make me laugh, like the sticker for the all-night taco stand in Tampa. More than a few inspire nostalgia that’s a little too painful to dwell on for long.

But maybe I could play at all these places, just show up with my guitar and play a short five-song set (or play until I’m asked to leave), and move on. Like a guerrilla tour.

I could take my time, stretch it out over several months: a swing through New England in the fall, spend a summer day hitting the Jersey breweries & shore attractions. The Philadelphia leg alone would take me to a firehouse in Chinatown, the aforementioned cemetery, the Mütter Museum, and Dock Street Brewing.  Not a bad mini-tour.

But the more I think about it, the more I think this is an effort in retracing one’s steps, revisiting the things I meant to do but never got the chance. Looking back is always comforting, but stare too long and it can be intoxicating. I think I’ve got too much going on ahead of me to get stuck drinking in the past.

I might have to play South of the Border, tho.