Russ Taff Finds Joy In Some Favorites On ‘Cover Story’

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Russ Taff has fired up his creativity and reimagined some favorites on his new album, Cover Story, out today (Jan. 31) via Imagine House/Vere Music.

Produced by John Mark Painter, Cover Story chronicles Taff’s life’s journey with impassioned performances of timeless songs by Bob Dylan, U2, Prince, Simon & Garfunkel and more. Cover Story is essentially a story of love, the love of good friends, the love of those lives that have been moved by Taff’s body of work, and above all, his lifelong love of the redemptive, rejuvenating power of music. Among the project’s highlights is Taff’s powerful take on The National’s “Demons.”

“Steve [Taylor] said to me, There’s a song from The National that I want you to look at,” recalls Taff. “It was called ‘Demons’ and it was just exactly what I had been going through. The chorus, ‘I stay down with demons,’ it really opened my eyes to what was happening inside of me. I’d made all this progress and then all of a sudden, I got my knees cut out from under me and I fell right back to that insecure place. You take everything away and you’re standing just naked and you don’t know if you’re any good. You’re completely vulnerable. But then something is born out of that, you sing from a different place. It’s not guarded and it’s not controlled, it’s not the same licks that you’ve always gone back to. It was a challenge, and in that breaking, I surrendered.”

Taff recently released renditions of Depeche Mode’s “People Are People” and Blind Willie Johnson’s “Tear This Building Down,” the latter a staple of his mother’s hugely influential record collection that fueled him as a child and now serves as the opening track to the new album.

“Making Cover Story I was transported back to when I was 14 again with my acoustic guitar,” Taff adds. “I would sing from this place that was unfettered. It was not thought through. It wasn’t rehearsed. I began to relive what brought me into this, what brought me joy and what brought me happiness, just throwing my head back in that little Pentecostal church and singing without thinking about it. I mean, what a gift from God to rediscover that feeling.”

Cover Story Track List:
1. Tear This Building Down
2. People Are People
3. When Love Comes To Town
4. Demons
5. Ordinary World
6. The Cross
7. Grandma’s Hands
8. I Believe In You
9. The Sound of Silence
10. I Will
11. All The Poor and Powerless

Lorie Hollabaugh
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