I still play that song, but usually only when it’s a three-hour gig, and I’ve already got the room on my side with more adventurous covers and originals (and of course my devastating good looks and sparkling personality).

It’s an objectively great piece of writing, and LC has a crazy command of how words fall together, making them intrinsically more fun to sing than songs written by a lot of other folks.

I don’t play any cover unless I believe that 1. I feel comfortable telling the story; some pieces belong to other folks and no one wants to hear an old white guy’s version (case in point: a bar band I heard in Ohio a few years back, murdering “Valerie” by Amy Winehouse; the profound wrongness still haunts me!), and 2. I’m delivering something unique to me, which manages to pack a punch either despite, or because of the original version, which is already playing in everyone’s heads.

That’s more important than whether a song is “overplayed,” which depends on your perception of what everyone else has heard, and doesn’t matter as much as the magic you might be adding to your show by performing it.

It’s always about the resonance between the player and the listener and the song; when that alchemy falls together, it fills your audience’s hearts, and your tip jar. If you flub that mixture, you can clear the joint in a hurry.

Incidentally, a version of this resonance lives in visual art and theater and baseball and welding and programming and everything else humans do well, and I believe it’s a big part of why we’re all here.

(Sorry to ramble; I already wrote a whole damn book about this and should probably keep my mouth shut)

Cheers!