Singing your life story with other people’s songs

“The road map,” says the veteran CCM singer Russ Taff, “was Johnny and Rick.”

“Johnny” is Cash, “Rick” is Rubin, and their “road map” is what Taff, his producer John Mark Painter, and his executive producer Steve Taylor followed in the making of Cover Story (Imagine House/Vere), Taff’s new collection of other people’s songs. Soulful, bare-bones, and eclectic, it’s already being compared—favorably—to the stripped-down, late-career American recordings that Rubin produced for the Man in Black.

“Both Steve and John had that in the backs of their heads,” says Taff. “‘If we could just take an old, established singer and do something different.’”

Old? Taff turned 71 last November. And as an Imperial, a Gaither Vocal Band member, the maker of a dozen solo albums, the winner of six Grammys, and a three-time inductee of the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, he’s definitely established. But what’s different about Cover Story isn’t the material. (Taff’s 1991 album Under Their Influence was a covers project too.) It’s that the songs run the gamut from century-old gospel blues (Blind Willie Johnson) to 21st-­century CCM (Andy Gullahorn, All Sons & Daughters) with stops along the way for Paul Simon, Bill Withers, Bob Dylan, U2, Depeche Mode, the National, Duran Duran, and Prince. “We just piled a bunch of songs on the table,” says Taff, “songs that we’ve liked over the years. Then we started culling them out.”

What Taff, Painter, and Taylor were looking for was material that accurately mapped the ups and downs of Taff’s life story, a story that has become increasingly well known thanks to the 2018 documentary I Still Believe. Directed by Rick Altizer, it explored Taff’s decades-long struggle with alcohol, the toll that it took on his career and family, and the grace by which, 17 years ago now, Taff finally came out on top.

The presence of many of the songs on Cover Story needs no explanation. But what about something as un-Taff-like as Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World”? “That song took me back to trying to find my way,” says Taff, “and looking at folks that had peace. They were happy, going to church, and smiling, but I was confused and scared and alone. I thought, ‘I’ve got to find what they have!’ That ordinary world was the place I was looking for.”

And what about the National’s “Demons”? “I don’t listen to songs with ‘demon’ in the title,” says Taff, laughing, “so I’d never heard that one. But it’s the best description of addiction that I’ve ever heard. You want to know what addiction is like? Listen to that.”

And if you want to know what overcoming addiction is like, well, Cover Story has songs for that too.

“I’m thrilled with it,” says Taff. “At my age, to do something you’ve never done before—I am just so blessed that it fell my way.”