Cover Day 2026 – Ray Toler

It’s the 22^nd. That means it’s cover day. I think I’ve probably danced around this before, but let me come out and be blunt this time. I don’t really like cover day. It’s actually a really nice idea and there are some big positives to it. First, it’s a one-day reprieve from having to come up with something entirely on your own, which is a nice breather as we turn the corner into week four. Second, it’s a great way for people to show their appreciation of what other participants have come up with during the month.

It’s pretty common to find a new favorite song or twelve from the daily output in the preceding three weeks. This year has had somewhat light participation, but there have still been a lot of really great things posted.

So why do I not like Cover Day? Well, it’s not so much that I don’t like it. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that it stresses the crap out of me.

Get The Hell Out!

A few years ago, when we’d met our new neighbors and were hanging out a lot because the world had lost its mind, I learned that “leaving anxiety” is an actual thing. I’d always worry that we hadn’t spent enough time with them, or that I’d left too abruptly. I’d worry about it to Mary, who would sometimes also have that feeling. Finally, I brought it up in conversation with them one night, only to find that they sometimes had exactly the same worries about offending us for exactly the same reason, and that’s when I learned the term “leaving anxiety.” It’s silly, but that doesn’t make it any less stressful. Once we agreed that nobody was being offended, it was a lot more relaxed.

Similarly – Cover Day. Wow, do I have a lot of beasts in the Closet of Anxieties.¹ I’m not going to bore you with all of my personal rationales for the following insecurities, but here’s a partial – partial – list of things that I stress over:

Am I going to offend the person with what I do?
Is there someone who never gets covered that should?
Can I do the song justice?
Will people think I’m showing off by doing my normal level of production if that’s not their normal level of production?
Have I covered this person before / too recently / too many times?
Do I have enough time to do what I need to do to this song?
Do I have the ability to do this song?
What if I don’t get it right or run out of time?
Am I bringing anything new to this song?
Am I changing too much with the new things I’m bringing to this song?

Yes, any rational person would look at most of these things and dismiss them as silly, and they’d be right to do so. But I can’t let those things go. They worry me every year. And every year, even though I swear I’m going to ignore cover day and just do another original track, I always seem to acquiesce at the last minute and go for it.

Now, sometimes, it’s a really fun process. I had a blast with Sea Pap. Sometimes it’s an awesome challenge to work something to my style, or to make some minor tweaks that put the original in a new light and give it a different depth or interpretation. Sometimes, it’s a complete disaster.² But I’ve almost gotten to the point where I want to post in the comments in week two that if anyone wants me to cover one of their songs, to let me know. Otherwise I’ll be hiding in a corner if you need me.

Enough of all of that wallowing. Let’s talk about the songs I covered this year. Yeah, that’s right, songS. Plural. After all of that, I covered two songs. Wanna make something of it?

Sweater Made of Moonlight (Susan B Cover) Ray Toler 2:05
Gone Home (Seersha Cover) Ray Toler 1:46

Sweater Made of Moonlight (Susan B)

Susan B is a new participant this year. I know and remember the panic of hitting the “upload” button the first time, so I’m always cheering anyone who has crossed that line. It’s terrifying and liberating. I’m often inclined to try and cover new participants – I certainly took it as the huge compliment the first time someone covered one of my songs, and hope they feel the same.

One line of Susan’s, in particular, stood out to me: maybe we’re just molecules of stubbornness and gratitude. That line stuck with me throughout the month, but I hadn’t really thought about covering one of her tracks because what would I do? I’m not going to do a poetry reading… I guess I could do some electronic thing where I chop up one of her recordings… no, that’s not really… huh. I have no idea. But when I went back to listen to her recording of Sweater Made of Moonlight, I realized that she was actually singing it. There was a melody there. Ok, now I have a thread to start unraveling this thing.

I’m not sure how other people feel about it, but I have, at times, taken small liberties with the original work. Changing a word or note here or there. I took a few more than usual this time. Susan had made a comment that all of her tracks were turning into country songs, and I could kind of hear that in what she was singing, but nobody wants me to seriously attempt a country song. I’m not sure I’m capable of it. I only have one non-serious example to share with you and the title should tell you everything you need to know: I Tried to Feed Her Kale (2018).³

So country is out. But let’s read the text. It’s soft, quiet, vulnerable, appreciative. I can work with that. The melody is close to what I’d need, but I have no framework to put it in. I worked out a few different progressions before deciding on what you hear. The meter of the text isn’t always uniform, and that’s been a cool challenge that I’ve been giving myself as well this year – sometimes it’s ok to not rhyme or to leave a line out (or add one in), so that was a bonus incentive.

I decided to cover this one partially because of the “new person” thing, partially because that one line had been stuck in my head for a few weeks, and partially because it was a cool stretch goal – almost a blank canvas to set to whatever I want. I hope Susan likes it. As I said, I took some not-so-small liberties with the melody she sang and the phrasing, but I think it’s a valid interpretation of the lyrics.

Gone Home (Seersha)

Let me get the boasting out of the way first. I’m the one who roped Seersha into participating in Song-A-Day, and I think I did a pretty good job with my first recruiting effort. I met her a few years back while I was dabbling with live streaming my composition sessions on Twitch. She was also streaming (much more successfully and professionally) and that’s how I came across her music. I mentioned Song-A-Day and that I’d be happy to get her an invitation to join. She seemed mildly interested, but I didn’t expect her to join – I’m sure successful streamers get “collab bro?” offers all the time. To my great surprise, she did join and had a fantastic first year. I was super-pleased that she returned this year.

Now, covering Seersha is also a stretch goal, but a very different one. I’m hesitant to do anything with her music because I don’t really know what I can bring that doesn’t detract from what she already did. Gone Home, however, was one that I really liked for melody, topic, and emotion.

What I’ve posted isn’t complete, and what’s there isn’t completely right either, but I think it got enough of it out so that I can hear where I’d want it to go. I made a couple of chord changes that I think worked nicely, and the orchestra will be awesome once I get the arrangement right. I should have taken it up a step or two, and I’d much rather have her vocals on it, but I don’t want to dwell on the negatives – I have enough anxieties about cover day. Instead, let’s celebrate a beautiful song and hope that she releases a final (and expanded) version of it some day in the future!

Colophon

Instruments & Samples

Sweater Made of Moonlight: Kurzweil K2600XS, Diva
Gone Home: Pianoteq, Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra

Effects, Mixing, & Mastering

FabFilter, Valhalla, Kraftur, Gullfoss, H3000 Factory

Notes

1
See: Bloom County
2
I have lamented the abject failure in almost any criteria you can name with my cover version of Splat Rat. I am referencing it one last time, and then let’s never speak of it again.
3
I haven’t written a blog post about that one, so if you want to listen to it, you can find it on my Song-A-Day 2018 page.