"Everywhere and Nowhere" by Anne Reburn: Light Strength

Anne Reburn is one of the very best of the new crop of artists who have done astonishingly good covers of classic rock songs ranging from the Beach Boys to ELO.   These include Foxes and Fossils, The286, Mr. Jack, The Fendertones, Hal Eisenberg, and The Petersens.  In fact, Reburn is  in one way even more remarkable, because she sings and plays all of the parts herself.

So I was eager to hear what Anne Reburn sounds like singing a song she wrote.  That happened yesterday, with a new release, "Everywhere and Nowhere".  She chose to make the video purely acoustic, with lyrics, so we don't see the fetching visual performance of her "clones" that we get on her cover videos.   But the song and the performance of "Everywhere and Nowhere" are more than fine.

The song is reminiscent of early James Taylor and even a bit like something from the Beatles' Rubber Soul.  It's about love and places, in particular how the place doesn't matter if you have the love, "I'll write a song about how I don't need those places if I've got you with me ... It's not where we are, it's the company."

Her voice has a wispy sweetness with a hint of the sea of power and conviction underneath.  The guitar and feel is acoustic, mostly folk but country on edges.  As much as I enjoy Anne Reburn's covers, I'm looking forward to hearing more of her original work.  Our world is sorely in need of her light touch.

on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple, Amazon

Three Beach Boys Covers: Foxes and Fossils, Hal Eisenberg, The Fendertones

I'm still in a musical frame of mind -- actually, I always am -- but this frame includes writing, so here's my third blog post in two days about exceptional music, in this case, three excellent Beach Boy covers that I've been really enjoying on YouTube.

The first is "Don't Worry Baby" by the cleverly named Foxes and Fossils.  That would be three women who look and sing great, and a number of guys who sing and play, and bill themselves as old, though some are probably younger than I am (I usually feel like I'm 17, unless it's a bad day, and it's more like 19).  I love the velvety harmony and the whole general feel of this video.

Next is "I Can Hear Music," which I just came across the other day, by Hal Eisenberg with "friends and family" in Nashville.  This is not a typical Beach Boys song -- it was written by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Phil Spector (Ellie Greenwich, by the way, produced my group The Other Voices aka The New Outlook for Atlantic Records in 1968) not Brian Wilson, who didn't even sing on the Beach Boys 1969 recording (Carl sang lead, and produced the record).  That makes it a tough song to cover really well.  Hal Eisenberg's is the best I've come across -- I like it even better than Kathy Trocolli's 1996 version with some of the original Beach Boys -- with Hal's evocative lead backed by sweet sweet harmonies.

And last but in no way least is the Fendertones' "Sloop John B".  The Fendertones have done so many Beach Boy covers that they may add up to more songs than the Beach Boys actually recorded.  And this one is a masterpiece, with Scott Totten and John Cowsill (who tour now with the Beach Boys and, yep, that's John Cowsill from the Cowsills) joining the Fendertones in a gracenote perfect rendition of Brian Wilson's stunning arrangement and recording, down to someone singing "I feel so break up" about a third-way into the song, when everyone else sings "broke up," just as The Beach Boys (probably accidentally) did in 1966.

I should mention how much I've always loved The Beach Boys.  They usually are my second all-time favorite group -- the first are the Beatles, and once in a while The Rolling Stones are my second.  The New Outlook sang "Surfer Girl" as one of our regular numbers, when we cut classes and sang in the early afternoon in The Alcove at City College up on 140th Street in Manhattan in the Fall of 1963.  So I'm always looking for good covers, and Foxes and Fossils, Hal Eisenberg, and The Fendertones are among the very best.