Covers that taught me

Every cover I have ever played taught me something I could not have learned from writing. You can read about a song forever and still miss the trick of it. You only really understand it when you put your own hands on it.

I learn covers slowly. I do not look at the chord chart on the first day. I sit with the recording and try to find where the singer is breathing, where the bass walks down, where the snare is just slightly behind the beat. Then I try to copy that, badly, until something useful breaks.

The parts that break are the parts I steal. Not the notes. The decisions behind them. Every artist I love has a habit, and the only way to inherit a habit is to wear it for a while.