GD-F40 Maynila Acoustic Guitar SFZ by Mildon Studios

Pat Cottrell did his best impersonation of James Taylor at the Mariner Grille last Thursday, as he filled the air with covers of the folk legend.

For starters, Cottrell sounds exactly like Taylor. He has been playing music since he was 17, yet has not done covers his whole career. In the late 1980s, he was in the popular local band the Philters. The Philters, not to be confused with the current pop power band out of Florida, were runners up in the 1989 WBRU Rock Hunt. The Philters did release a few cassettes and 45s.

Currently, Cottrell plays weddings, small bars, and public and private special events, such as birthday parties. Cortell is not your run of the mill cover artist, because he tries to get the crowd involved by personalizing the songs.

For example, the Don McLean lyric, “Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee drive was dry,” Cottrell modified. He took the lyric and sang, “Drove my Chevy to Narragansett.”

“Narragansett is a great town,” he told me. Cottrell believes the covers he plays appeal to everyone, and I agree with him. When asked what he plays, he tells people everything from James Taylor to the Violent Femmes.

Cottrell also brings playing covers to a whole new level. Instead of stopping between most songs, he plays into them, blending intros and outros, and it works. Pat plays with two mircophones and an acoustic guitar, and rocks it well.