As a solo artist and with his band the Bad Examples, Covert has released eight albums on the Chicago-based Waterdog Records, a label he started in 1991 with Whitehouse Records owner Jay Whitehouse and an investor.
Although Covert remains unknown in most of the U.S., he has built an impressive local following in the Chicago area, tallying airplay on triple-A WXRT, and has scored three minor hits with the Bad Examples on the CNR label in Holland.
Covert's biggest break in the U.S. occurred when Chicago's long-lived band Styx covered the Bad Examples' "Not Dead Yet" on its 1990 album "Edge Of The Century." Beyond that, however, Covert's talents have, for the most part, remained undiscovered by a mass audience.
However, that may soon change with the release of "Birthday." Fittingly, Covert's second full-length solo effort was released May 25, the singer/songwriter's birthday. Although the date fell on a Sunday, Waterdog and its Maplewood, N.J.-based distributor Big Daddy made an exception. It was on May 25, 1995, that Covert started recording the album with friends at his own birthday gathering, simply for the joy of making music.
"Birthday" wasn't the only present for Covert in recent weeks. Also in late May, "Sawdust And Spangles," a play inspired by the memoirs of 19th-century circus pioneer W.C. Coup and written by the singer/ songwriter and G. Riley "Gary" Mills, opened at the Firehouse in Chicago.
Lawrence Bommer of The Chicago Tribune called the play "a labor of love [that is] never dull, often eloquent and ultimately charming." In the review, Bommer credited Covert with writing the score, but in fact the singer/songwriter also co-wrote the play.
Says Covert, "There's only three songs in the whole thing. My co-writer called me and asked, 'How come they made it sound like I wrote the play and you wrote the songs?' I'm a musician, so they assume that's what I did."
While "Sawdust And Spangles" may not be heavy on Covert's music, the play was inspired in part by "The Amazing Romero," a track on "Birthday."
"Gary and I knew we were going to write a play together," Covert explains. "We had done some short things together and really enjoyed the process. When he heard 'The Amazing Romero' when I played it at a friend's house, he said, "That's it. That's the world for our play. We'll set it in the circus.'"
The fact that the album was released nearly simultaneously with the play's opening was "a neat piece of synchronicity... It is a real thrill to have written a play and see it and hear it and have it come to life in front of you. It is a very rare privilege that that many people have faith in something you do."
While "The Amazing Romero" takes place in the circus, the bulk of "Birthday" was inspired by Covert's toddler daughter, Fiona, whose photo graces the album's cover.
"Bedtime Girl," one of the album's most touching tracks, is a lullaby for Fiona. "One night I was tucking her into bed and I said, 'How's about a smile from a bedtime girl?' And Fiona's mom said, "That's a lyric to a song, go write that song.' So I came back to my place and wrote the song."
While Covert remains an independent artist, his material has definite mainstream potential. On the 13 tracks on "Birthday," his confessional songwriting and singing recalls the likes of James Taylor, Freedy Johnston, and former Crowded House front man Neil Finn.
The stark arrangements on "Birthday" allow Covert to showcase his songwriting talents - his songs are published by Waterdog Music (ASCAP), administered by Wixen Music Publishing - but the artist has no plans to abandon the Bad Examples, the group he founded in 1987.
"They work off each other in a nice way," he says of his careers with the band and as a solo artist. "There are some clubs that the band is more appropriate for, and there's others where the acoustic show is more appropriate. It allows me to explore the more rockin' pop stuff and the intimate acoustic stuff."
While "Birthday" favors the latter, the 1996 compilation "Popscape: The Best Of Ralph Covert And The Bad Examples" offers a brilliant overview of both sides of Covert's career (see ReDiscussion, this page).
To support "Birthday," Covert, who is booked by Ario Professional Artists, is playing numerous dates in the Chicago area through September. On July 27, he will host a showcase featuring songwriters at the Chicago New Music Festival and play a set with the Bad Examples.
To help spread the word about "Birthday," Waterdog's Whitehouse says the label will take a similar approach to the strategy it used to support "Eat At Godot's," Covert's 1993 solo debut.
For that album, Waterdog took out ads in such publications as Musician magazine and staged promotions with Tower Records.
Those efforts, however, were all but wasted when Landmark Distribution, which was then handling Waterdog product, abruptly closed (Billboard, April 23, 1994), leaving Waterdog and Covert hanging.
"As our records were being promoted and our money being spent, the records were being pulled out of stores because of [the Landmark] bankruptcy suit," Whitehouse says.
As Whitehouse explains, it was a crucial time in the development of Covert's career and the Waterdog label.
"We were in the midst of going from a company that had $80,000 in sales after being in business for two years to $250,000 in sales, and we would have doubled that the following year based upon where our orders were, but our records were being pulled out of stores.
"It hurt Ralph Covert directly," Whitehouse adds. "'Eat At Godot's' is a nice, beautiful record that had some heartfelt stuff on it, and the $35,000-$40,000 worth of advertising were essentially put in the fire."
During that period, Waterdog was in jeopardy of closing up shop. "The only thing that kept us in business was big balls, a refusal to quit, and faith in the catalog we put together," says Covert.
Since the demise of Landmark, Waterdog went on to find a temporary distributor before hooking up with Big Daddy Distribution, run by former Landmark principal Bart Goldstein.
With the release of "Birthday," things are looking up for the label and Covert.
"He's real popular locally," says Todd Marconi, manager of Rolling Stones Records, located in the Chicago suburb of Norridge, IL. "The new record is doing real well right now. He's got a good strong base in Chicago and throughout the Midwest."
Yet while Covert and the Bad Examples remain regional favorites, the singer/songwriter and his business partner Whitehouse remain optimistic that someday Covert will go on to greater success.
"This is the eighth title, and we would definitely like to see involvement from a major label, if it is possible," says Whitehouse, who also praises Covert's songwriting talents. "To me, if a publishing house really sat down and studied what this guy's got, I don't know what kind of advance you would negotiate. I think there is an awful lot of hit material for other people to record."
In the past, Covert has garnered the attention of at least a couple of major-label A&R executives, but the contract did not result in a deal.
"When we put the first record out in September 1991 there was a little band out of Seattle called Nirvana that put out a record at that time called 'Nevermind,'" Whitehouse says. "I talked to tons of major- label people at that point because they were seeing reports on a lot of radio stations for [the Bad Examples' second album] 'Bad Is Beautiful.' But every one of them, almost to the person, said, "This is not what's happening right now. This thing that is breaking out of Seattle is the next wave at rock radio, and we aren't interested in Squeeze/Beatles-type pop stuff'... I had A&R people telling me if you can get the rhythm guitarist to sound louder and angrier, maybe we could talk about this. I listened to them and said, 'What, are you kidding me? You called me, I didn't call you.'"
For Covert, the plan is to continue to follow his own muse. He acknowledges that his music, particularly the sentimental "Birthday" album, is "tremendously unhip...It's not politically correct in its whining negativism, but I got a feeling in my gut that there are some people who feel the same way that I do and like old-fashioned song craftsmanship."
"I don't measure my success by whether or not the industry has figured out what to do with me yet," Covert adds. "I measure it by talking to fans and finding out how they react to an album, and how I feel in my gut. That's success. The other pieces will come in time."