Bard of Ely's songs as covered by other singers

As a singer-songwriter I love to hear other people singing my songs. They always sound very different to how I do them and that is part of the joy of the experience.

Of course I also like to think that maybe one day someone could record a song of mine and make a hit out of it, and then I would get a very welcome share of royalties. This happens with famous singer-songwriters such as Neil Diamond who wrote I'm a Believer but The Monkees had a massive hit with the song.

It hasn't happened yet but I'm an optimist!

The first song of mine to get covered was Kingfisher. My good friend Pixi added it to his busking repertoire as I discovered one day many years back when I was walking through the shopping centre in Cardiff and heard my song being sung in Pixi's unmistakeable voice.

I followed my ears and found him entertaining the queue outside the cinema. In more recent years he has been performing my song with his band The Hundredth Money as well as when playing solo. The song is on their player on the band's Myspace site.

Pixi has also sang a cover of my song Real Love and Communication.

The next song of mine that gone sung by another singer was my song entitled Hymn. My good friend the Spanish singer-songwriter and artist Priscilla Hernandez and myself along with a musician called Ash Earl but whose stage name was One Less Joker decided to pool out talents as a virtual band called Prashbard (from Priscilla, Ash and Bard).

I would be the songwriter, Priscilla would sing it and Ash would add a musical backing. We released it on the old mp3.com website where we had met up and elsewhere on line and Priscilla once sang Hymn live on a Spanish TV show. I really felt honoured seeing this and knowing it was my song she was singing.

The next song of mine to get covered was Harvest Home, which Canadian singer-songwriter Daniel Iorio recorded a version of in his own style. It is very different to my original that was released on the Taffia EP on Crai Records in 2002, but just as good.

Then in 2006, Killer Miller of The Leftovers, recorded my new song San Marcos Blues and made a video of his performance. The song tells of my situation at that point in time when I was about to move but had no way of easily doing so, hence the blues.

The most recent cover of a song of mine was by Welsh radio presenter Steve Johnson. Steve and I know each other from the South Wales music scene of some years back and he was well acquainted with my song Jungle Love, which had been released on vinyl twice, once on Meltdown The Album on Chariot Records in 1989 and then again some years later on a limited edition coloured vinyl EP entitled Mask on the German Pink Lemon Records.

What happened was that due to technical problems on Steve's current Loose Goose show so he was unable to play any of my material I had submitted. I was listening to the show and Steve came up with the idea of him doing an acapella version of Jungle Love live on air if I sent him the lyrics by email.

I thought it would be a bit of fun and some publicity for my song so sent him the words and he sang it.

I hope that more of my songs will get covered by other artists so if there's any singers out there reading this please don't hesitate to get in touch if you fancy singing a Bard of Ely song!

Copyright © 2010 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.