What'd you say? You want more Gene Clark covers? Oh boy, have we got you covered...

So folks, time for round two of We've Got You Covered, featuring the one and only Gene Clark. Or rather, a bunch of cool but (too) unknown folks covering songs of Mr. Harold Eugene Clark, pride of Tipton, Missouri. And since launching the series I'm happy to report that we will have definitely five volumes of this series. 

The other thing that is important for me in this series is variety of song choices. As we discussed with secret author Jonder when covering the other segment of We've Got You Covered, starring Lowell George and Little Feat that you could probably fill an entire album with covers of "Willin'", which thankfully his last cool Little Feat covers album over at Jokonky's wasn't. With Gene Clark, the song that is more often covered than any other is "Feel A Whole Lot Better". But Clark's song catalogue is so rich and my 'no doubles on an album' policy strict enough to limit each disc to a single "Feel A Whole Lot Better" - on this album provided by country-pop lady Juice Newton - and different songs all around, as well as no doubles in terms of artists per volume. We'll see whether that principle can hold until the end, but for right now variety of songs, styles and artists is assured. 

So, what goodies do we have today? 

There's the British music collective built around 4AD label head Ivo Watts-Russel who kept the relatively high-profile Gene Clark covers coming in the late 1980s and early 90s, here with their appropriately arty take on "Strength of Strings". There's contemporary artists and co-workers like Linda Ronstadt, Byron Berline and Iain Matthews, an artist who has been faithful to covering Clark, from 1974's Sometimes You Eat The Bear And Sometimes The Bear Eats You all the way to 2017's A Baker's Dozen, from which this version of "Silver Raven" is taken. There's younger admirers like Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, also rans from the 1990s 'cool cymru' run of successful bands from Wales or Wilco, of which three of the most prominent members (thus the band name Demi-Wilco) cover "Tried So Hard". 

But, as ever, I'm happy to have lesser known artists with some of the lesser-known Clark songs: Speed Hearse covering "Dark Of My Moon", Velvet Crush covering "Why Not Your Baby", Ross Thomas covering "In A Misty Morning" or King Penguin covering "Gypsy Rider", a song which has surprisingly often been covered by Clark admirers. Or, you know, almost completely unknown atist with known song, such as Jrsn2Music, a guy named John doing covers on YouTube, including this very lovely reading of "She Don't Care About Time" with dubbed over mandolin. And finally, there's family, with brother Rick paying tribute with a very fine version of "Del Gato", the song he co-wrote with his big brother.  

So, yeah, a wonderful mix - if I dare say so myself - of known and lesser known songs by known and lesser known artists.Which in many ways is a lot more like the artist being paid tribute to than an all-star, all-known 'hits' comp would have been. Enjoy.