Russ Taff To Release New Album "Cover Story" January 31
Russ Taff is kicking off 2025 with the upcoming release of his eagerly awaited new album, Cover Story, arriving via Imagine House/Vere Music on Friday, January 31.
Executive produced by Steve Taylor (Sixpence None the Richer, Newsboys), produced by John Mark Painter (Fleming & John, Ben Folds, Sevendust), and mixed by Matt Wallace (Faith No More, The Replacements), Cover Story marks perhaps the most singularly special album in Taff's extraordinary four-decade career, chronicling his remarkable life's journey with impassioned performances of timeless songs by such masters as Bob Dylan, U2, Prince, Simon & Garfunkel, and more. Among its highlights is an intensely powerful take on The National's "Demons," premiering everywhere today.
"I wasn't comfortable at all at first with the approach Steve and John were taking," says Russ Taff. "Because, as a singer, for all of these years, there's microphones that I like, preamps that I like. That becomes your security blanket, you feel safe and you feel secure, because that's how you've done it for your whole career. But Steve and John, they said let's do it differently this time. I got scared and said, I don't know if I can do what you guys are asking me to do."
"Steve said to me, There's a song from The National that I want you to look at. 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."
Cover Story also includes 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 opening track to the new album. Both tracks are available now at all DSPs and streaming services.
Now, with Cover Story, Taff has gathered all the threads of his life, all the tenderness, scars, and resilient humanity, into what is perhaps his most uniquely personal album thus far.
Backed by an all-star band of session superstars including Painter, guitarist Kenny Vaughan (Marty Stuart, Lucinda Williams, Jim Lauderdale), keyboardists Blair Masters (Garth Brooks, Casting Crowns, Peter Frampton) and Phil Madeira (Emmylou Harris, Phil Keaggy, Buddy Miller), Taff chronicles his journey via songs by legendary artists and songwriters, finding within them a similar message of faith, authenticity, and inspiration that he's brought to his own songwriting.
Taff has always brought righteous power to his music, but his impassioned performances of songs like Bob Dylan's "I Believe In You" and Duran Duran's worldwide #1 favorite, "Ordinary World" display something altogether new and heretofore unheard, a thunderous vigor and breadth of spirit that he's never before revealed on record. Taff's famously formidable voice has somehow become more potent, strengthened by the hard fought lessons and deep wisdom he's accrued along the way. Cover Story is more than anything a story of love - the love of good friends, the love of those lives have been moved by Taff's milestone body of work, and above all, Russ Taff's lifelong love of the redemptive, rejuvenating power of music.
"Making Cover Story I was transported back to when I was 14 again with my acoustic guitar," says Russ Taff. "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."
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