34. Cover Down, Pray Through

Four things that Cover Down, Pray Through has in common with Trouble in Mind:

1. Both are long songs spun out of a single repeating riff.

2. The attitude (of the narrator, of the singer, of the backing singers, of the band) is where I find a considerable amount of both songs’ appeal.

3. Both feature an “alone/stone” rhyme, though different in meaning and tone.

4. Neither song appears on a studio album.

Unlike Trouble in Mind, of which we have two studio takes but nothing in the live arena, Cover Down, Pray Through was never (as far as I’m aware) even attempted in the studio, whereas we do have a lot of live versions, and in the Gospel era, or at least in 1980, live is generally what takes you furthest. We’re fortunate, then. Even on Trouble No More, you can get a sense of the song’s evolution: the version from the Toronto show on April 18^th is faster, and has the whole band starting up at once. The version on Disc 4, from May 1^st, features the tentative-like opening that Dylan came to prefer, with the band easing itself in piece by piece, venturing note by venturing note, rather than starting hot and sure and all together. It’s also got Dylan working the phrasing in the way that Fred Tackett, his lead guitarist, so enjoyed, teasing the words and hesitating and stretching out the lines so that sometimes it doesn’t seem like he’s going to manage to fit all of them into a given bar or verse, yet he always, and in ever new ways, does.

Later in May, Dylan would start singing along with the second and fourth lines of the verse that, on both Trouble No More versions, is sung by the backing singers alone; it’s a fantastic, forceful, swaggering verse (“He’s the hammer of salvation / The breastplate of righteousness / Genesis to Revelation / Repent and confess”) and it’s easy to see why, after having ceded to his convincing friends (who on these spring/summer stages were Clydie King, Regina McCrary, Gwen Evans, Mary Elizabeth Bridges, and Mona Lisa Young) for several performances, Dylan couldn’t help but wish to join back in. The slinky band groove, never quite steady in the song’s later iterations, plus Dylan’s adventurous vocals and the excellence of the song itself make exploring the different versions we have bootlegged of Cover Down, Pray Through a joy.

Although many of my favorites come from later in the tour, as far as what Trouble No More made available goes, I prefer the earlier and faster Toronto version; I don’t think that the Buffalo performance from May 1^st, however enjoyable, is an especially great demonstration of the powers of the song in its looser later form. The April 18^th performance, by contrast, grooves hard, sounding like a little brother to Solid Rock, with the band in disconcerting sync with itself and with its leader, and Jim Keltner sneaking in all these great little rolls on the snare. I also really love Jim Keltner’s off-beat hit on the crash cymbal in the fake-out ending, just as the band is swinging back into motion.

I really love that fake-out ending. Dylan stops singing. The band cedes the stage to the backing singers so that their injunctions to “pray through” may ring out clearly (though, ironically, there was conflict for decades, among those inclined to debate the question, whether the song title was Cover Down, Break Through or Cover Down, Pray Through, until at last, on Trouble No More, Clinton Heylin prevailed)—but the girls don’t seem to want to stop singing—finally they settle on a climactic “praaaaay throoooouuuuuugh”—only for the whole band to start up again, and the glorious lurching rhythm to continue. Primarily, this whole antic is for fun—I imagine the entire band focused and delighted for the minute or so it takes. But it’s also illustrative. When you think the danger’s done and past, sometimes you still need to cover down again and keep on praying until, someday, at last, maybe, if there’s enough of that saving grace, you can pray all the way through.

The most convincing account I’ve found of the precise meaning or use of the title phrase comes from Expecting Rain user Untrodden Path:

“Years ago, long before I had any gospel era bootlegs I was visiting a woman in the hospital near Atlanta that told me a story about her childhood and knowing a former slave who as a child had been on her grandfather's plantation. As she told the story ... there were so many times when they prayed and it felt like their prayers weren't getting any higher than the clouds. She asked him, ‘What'd you do?’ He said, ‘Sometimes you got to cover down and pray through’ and he explained that it meant to persevere and not give up hope, even if you think God doesn't hear you.”

“Well you heard about Pharaoh’s army,” the song begins, casting its net way, way into the past, all the way back to the days of Set (as Thomas Mann puts it), “trampling through the mud / You heard about the Hebrew children redeemed by blood.” If someone asked me for my ten favorite Dylan opening couplets they’d find Cover Down, Pray Through there. The next lines bring the story to the present, and not the singer’s present, but the listener’s, making it forever timely: “Same spirit dwelling in you that raised Christ from the dead / It’ll quicken your mortal body then let it get to your head.”

Throughout the song, the worry and the trouble and the hardship that the lyrics document come up hard against the refuge of the refrain, a refrain in which the backing singers linger after Dylan has stepped away from the microphone, after the band has settled into what sounds like the song’s ending, and even after the band has danced through the passionate revival-outro. Then and only then, after the truly final savored “pray through,” does the band’s leader allow the song to end, and the band members make ready to perform Precious Angel. Cover Down, Pray Through is so wild and committed and accomplished at every show that it’s amazing to think that it’s only the fifth song of the night—and Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell for Anybody, which held the setlist slot before Cover Down, Pray Through, only the fourth!

And yet should we be surprised? In April and May 1980?