Watching The Covers Flow Podcast Debuts : A Musical Feast Of Dylan Cover Songs

 Many superb podcasts begin in another format. Some podcasts begin as blogs, others as newsletters, still others as articles or books. 

Author and music savant Ray Padgett has published blogs and books that have offered music fans greater insight into popular music. 

Now, he has a new music podcast out that is sensational. It's called Watching The Covers Flow. It's a podcast that dives deep into covers of, and by, the most covered songwriter in rock and roll: Bob Dylan. 

 Host Ray Padgett (Flagging Down the Double E's (about Dylan concerts) newsletter, Pledging My Time:Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members book) explores covers across era and genre, from a hip-hop "Subterranean Homesick Blues" to a bluegrass "Ring Them Bells" to Dylan's own frequent detours from writing his own songs to singing other people's.

Clearly, Padgett has the passion and the bona fides to discuss Bob Dylan, and he does so with gusto and encyclopedic knowledge of all things Dylan.

Padgett also has a passion for cover songs, as evidenced by his Cover Me blog (since 2007), which is the most prominent blog devoted to cover songs on the internet. Padgett released a highly-touted and well-received book, Cover Me: The stories behind the Greatest Cover Songs of all time, in 2017.

Cover Me doesn’t just take the reader through 19 famous cover songs and their origin stories. Padgett has something more profound, more relevant, and ultimately more satisfying in mind. Each chapter about the 19 cover songs uses the investigation into the genesis of famous cover songs as a framework to tell a larger story of how each music genre and artist has evolved. 

As if Padgett's music resume needs more burnishing, he is also the author of I’m Your Fan: The Songs Of Leonard Cohen.

Fittingly, the podcast is part of the FM Podcast Network, whose slogan is "Great Music Pods for Serious Music Fans." Talk about truth in advertising.

 To kick off the first episode, Padgett picks Dylan's Empire Burlesque album, which was released in 1985, and received generally positive reviews, but a number of critics dunked on the production. Padgett explains to listeners that the album was divisive because Dylan used drum machines, synthesizers, backing vocals, sounding like Prince.  

Padgett reviews all ten songs on the album, offering listeners a masterclass of musical criticism on the bands or artists who covered these songs. As listeners, we get to hear long clips of each cover song, with Padgett adding his musical expertise and background info. 

For example, the very first song, Tight Connection To My Heart, is covered by Jon Carrol and Love Returns. Padgett tells us that Carrol was a member of the Starland Vocal Band, which had a # 1 hit single in 1976 with the novelty song "Afternoon Delight."

On Never Gonna Be The Same Again, Padgett became a musical detective, hunting down a cover by an unknown named Ron Sexsmith, who had the song recorded on an album only in the singer's possession.

One of my favorite covers was by Carla Olson, who took Dylan's Clean Cut Kid and, by Padgett's own admission, improved the song. In Trust Yourself, June Carter Cash's daughter, Carlene Carter, belts out the song with Bob Dylan as one of the backup singers. 

When one of the album's least covered songs, Something's Burning Baby, is played, a musician named Scott Sympathy rocks out on the song.

Padgett is superb here as our musical tour guide. He knows Dylan. He knows music of all genres, and he has an insatiable curiosity about how music affects our culture. Padgett has a natural inclination toward engaging storytelling. As a host, his tone is relaxed, low-key, and endlessly fascinating.

 If you're wondering if this concept is deep enough in material to sustain a podcast, then consider this. Over 600 musicians have released their own recordings of songs written by Dylan, creating more than 1,500 covers of nearly 300 unique songs.

You don't have to be a Dylan fan to enjoy this podcast. If the first episode is any indication of what's to come, listeners will be treated a wide range of musical talents covering Dylan songs. In the first episode alone, we heard from the Carlene Carter, Lucius, and The O'Jays.

Famous artists who have covered Dylan songs include The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, Bruce Springsteen, and Trisha Yearwood. As Padgett will explain, sometimes it's the unknown artists who do the most with Dylan songs.

For serious music fans and Dylan acolytes, Watching The Covers Flow is going to be an ear worthy podcast. And if you just like music, then this podcast with covers galore will be a feast of musical variety where your ears can overindulge.

To paraphrase one of Dylan's most famous songs, "Hey, Mr. Ray Padgett Man, play a cover song for me."