They’re Sprouting Like Mushrooms: Seems that there’s a new cover blog on the block. Check out Cover Mode. Go ahead. I’ll wait for you to come back.

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I used to date a woman who had family in Toronto. And every year she would insist on going there to visit her relatives over the Thanksgiving holiday. The only problem was that Canada celebrates Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October so I always missed the big feast at home and also missed it in Canada. For years she deprived me of my turkey and cranberry sauce and that’s just one of the reasons we broke up.

So it is in that same spirit of just missing Thanksgiving that I post these songs about giving thanks three days late.

ZZ Top “I Thank You” (Sam And Dave)
Billy Gibbons could sing the phone book and make it sound sleazy. And what’s Thanksgiving about if not sleaze?

Lee Karnaghan “Thank God I’m A Country Boy” (John Denver)
This song doesn’t stray too far from the original musically but the lyrics are all about being an Australian cowboy. Think of it as a short class in cultural anthropology.

Magazine “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)” (Sly & the Family Stone)
The song’s essential funky DNA is there but Magazine piles on burbling synthesizer squeals and freaky guitars.

Anita O’Day “Thanks For The Memory” (Bob Hope)
Finding a decent cover of this song was way more difficult than I anticipated. It’s quite the jazz standard but it seems that nobody’s bothered to come up with a fresh arrangement since the song came out in 1938. Just as I was beginning to lose hope Anita O’Day came through with a slinky Latin-tinged version.

Russ Tolman “Thanks A Lot” (Ernest Tubb)
When you’re covering a Johnny Cash song it’s very easy to just do it as a country song (pedal steel is optional but encouraged). But the man’s songs of heartbreak and hope are so universal that there’s no reason not to put them in a new musical context. Russ Tolman does a great job of exactly that.