Acoustic covers for female

[Eastbound]

Thank so much for all the suggestions. Should be able to pull quite a few tunes from all these! We are doing an open mic tomorrow night and will be our second time on stage together. After this, I'll be bringing in some of these tunes to build the set list up for other performances.

My girl is a voice teacher, awesome singer and a busy woman. Obviously, very picky about her vocal performances. When I pick a tune, she really takes a long time to flesh it out, find her key and figure out all nuances. Seems difficult to just throw out some tunes and give them a try. If she doesn't know the melody and all the words, It'll have to wait till she does. Then sometimes we need to throw the tune away if it doesn't quite work out right. Its been taking too long (for me) to get new material picked and practiced.

Im more the guy who just tries things out on the spot, and learn on the fly type thing. I mean, if I know a song at all, I can usually figure out the chord progression on the spot and sing it a little. So basically Im wanting to go faster then she wants too. Its a bit of a conflict, but I just need to slow down to her pace.

That said, the songs we already have are very polished and sounding good. She is getting excited to add more tunes. Really looking forward to trying some of these out!

[jeanray1113]

Nanci Griffith’s entire catalog is a gold mine for any female vocalist.

[jseth]

Sure sounds as though you are doing a LOT of work on this. My first thought was, "She needs to take responsibility for her performance and song selection...".

It's one thing to suggest a tune or two, but, really? If she's gonna do this thing with you, then the songs she sings need to come from her... if she's unwilling to choose songs to sing that she can believe in, the performance is going to suffer, no matter how good a singer she is. It's going to sound like a really good singer who doesn't care about what she's singing...

You may be better off doing solo gigs until she is fully "onboard" with the duo thing...

[Brent Hahn]

Originally Posted by jseth

if she's unwilling to choose songs to sing that she can believe in, the performance is going to suffer, no matter how good a singer she is.

Every hear the Joe Cocker version of "She Came In Though the Bathroom Window?" Now there was a guy who could fake sincerity.

[Jeffreykip]

This thread makes me want to create a Spotify playlist. I like a lot of the ones I have read.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone go really old school like Mary Travers/Peter Paul and Mary, Melanie, or The Weavers.
I also like Motown done acoustic and you could go Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Supremes, etc.
In alternative I like covering Feist and The Sundays (there’s a great cover of I Can’t Be Sure on youtube).
I don’t know how ambitious you are on guitar bit in the traditional acoustic genre there’s Molly Tuttle. And how has no one mentioned Indigo Girls? Michelle Shocked went a little mad, but her Campfire Tapes album is acoustic blues at its best.
A dive into Youtube channels NPR Tiny Desk Concerts or Less Than Face Productions will give even more ideas and they are a great inspiration for acoustic arrangements.