Nick Lowe: Full Show from KLRU-TV on Vimeo.

Dave Matthews has been known to do this one live. Here he is from 1999 with Tim Reynolds (decent audio, no tripod).

Ed Robertson of the band Barenaked Ladies likes the song, too. The band has performed the song live, but apparently without any decent microphones in the audience. But here’s audio of Ed playing the song in his bathroom (from The Bathroom Sessions bootleg):

Lovett doesn’t play “If I Had a Boat” in this short set but he performs in the intimate setting of an NPR Tiny Desk concert with singing fiddler (fiddling singer?) Luke Bulla.

I was surprised at how much he used the capo in that video (a capo is that movable clamp on the neck of the guitar that essentially retunes the guitar into a higher key). In the 2012 interview with Acoustic Guitar, he addresses this:

“I use the heck out of capos,” Lovett says. “I’m not self-conscious about using a capo, but maybe I should be, because real guitar players tease me about it. Often times, when I sit down to make up a song, it’s early in the morning and—this sounds like a joke, but it’s just the truth—I’ll start out a lot lower than I’ll end up. I’ll be a whole step, or sometimes maybe two whole steps lower than my onstage key. So, rather than rethink and reconfigure the voicings, I just move the capo.”

Similarly, from a 2004 interview with Acoustic Guitar:

“I prefer chords with open strings, rather than closed chords. As a result I use a capo relentlessly, especially since the key changes. I’ll find a voicing that I like for a particular song, and rather than change the voicing, I’ll just move the capo.”

Okay, it won’t embed on this site, but if you want to see Lovett’s original video for “If I Had a Boat” (with a full head of lush, dark, Eraserhead hair) interspersed with interviews of old guys, this is where you need to go.

I wish the audio was better on this last one, but here’s Lyle again, with John Hiatt adding a tasty lick or two:

I think I usually reference the fact that my go to source for information on songs is the wonderful songfacts.com, written by DJs and rock journalists and originally built as a database of facts for radio djs to throw out before or after a song. “You know, before Cyndi Lauper won a Tony, she wrote this little song with one of The Hooters…”

Anyway, the Songfacts entry on Time After Time is exhaustive about the composition and recording of the song and there’s nothing to add in that department. The rest of this post will assume you went to their site and read about the song.

Meanwhile, I want to consider the idea of this song becoming a standard, like “I Got Rhythm” or “All of Me.”

Cyndi Lauper’s video:

The trailer for the 1979 film “Time After Time” whose title inspired Lauper. H.G. Wells follows Jack the Ripper into the present (1979) and falls in love with Mary Steenburgen along the way. Yikes.

Hyman says that the chorus originally had an upbeat reggae feel. That changed when the lyrics of the verse suggested a more bittersweet tone. Still, if you want to know what a reggae version would sound like,

One definition of a musical standard is simply that everyone knows the song. A plethora of cover versions helps suggest ubiquity. (SAT vocabulary words bonus!) We’ll slowly work our way towards some jazz versions.

A pop-punk version with male lead vocal from Quietdrive, because that’s the name of a band. (As a reminder, I link to videos that I am ashamed to make you watch here. For this song, especially, there are a LOT of covers).

Cool dancing in the R&B version by INOJ but the song is simply faithful to the original, with a new drum track and some gospel echoes.

Canadian twins Tegan and Sara. That’s another weird accent. Does this song bring out odd accents that I never noticed before? That said, their commentary at the end — that the song can’t sound too happy and loyal, but has to have an undercurrent of tears — seems right.

This is just weird, but if it’s from a group called Science-Monkey and it’s from Japan and it’s under 2 minutes long, I need to embed it:

Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20 solo acoustic. (And sometimes I embed just because it’s a car wreck that you can’t turn away from.) What’s with his odd enunciation? He sings like he’s simultaneously trying to get a glob of peanut butter unstuck from his teeth:

Okay sorry for that. Seriously, though, here’s a nice version by the amazing Eva Cassidy. Nice, simple accompaniment with a beautiful voice — I like the pause before the chorus but I think that kind of thing works only after the audience has internalized the song, as they would with a standard. We all know it, we’re waiting for something, and then the silence builds on our anticipation.

Similarly, when Cassidy plays around with the melody a bit, we know where the “real” melody is and this lets her be an echo or harmony to the tune in our head.

I have no idea who this kid is, but this is an amazing instrumental version on acoustic guitar:

Speaking of amazing guitarists, jazz player Tuck Andress and his wife Patti (aka Tuck and Patti) include the song in their repertoire. Tuck really hits the harmonics on his guitar solo, and Patti just goes off on a tangent around the world, before getting the audience to sing harmonies (the crowd could be a little more enthusiastic).

Jazz, with its emphasis on improvisation needs standards precisely for the reasons cited above regarding Eva Cassidy. Familiarity allows for a contained creativity that allows the audience to explore while still having structure.

Cyndi Lauper said that her favorite cover artist was Miles Davis. Well, why not? Aside from being one of the great jazz musicians and composers of the 20th century, his use of her song helps solidify its position as a pop standard (of course he also covered Scritti Politti but that’s another story).

Okay, here’s Cyndi from a recent 2005 performance with Sarah Mclachlan singing alongside.