I’m on my way flying from Denver to Las Vegas for the MediaXChange Conference, and it occurred to me that now is a great time to give some credit to a few of the individuals who have been so instrumental to the growth and success of Coverville. Now is a great time for me to introduce them to you, and for me to give them my thanks.

To be fair, I’ll put them in chronological order in which they joined the Coverville family.

Wayne from the UK should be named first. Visitors to the site and to the forums have seen much of Wayne’s comments, and I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always agree with his opinions, but I welcome them nonetheless. Aside from a frequent commenter and frequent requester, Wayne, through his contacts, was able to arrange for me to meet and interview Tim DeLaughter from The Polyphonic Spree, which was such an amazing interview. Both times I’ve seen Tim and the Spree in concert, he’s given a shout out to Coverville during the show – both times right before covers – and their “Lithium” is a hall-of-famer in the Coverville Countdown. Thanks for all your contributions, Wayne.

Shelby Miller, the host of the indie music podcast Shifted Sound, started out as a requester, and then blew me away by offering to design t-shirts for the show. His incredible designs can still be seen and purchased from CafePress, by the way. All he asked in return was a chance to promote his own t-shirt line, which I was happy to do, and I feel like I benefited from his terrific talent. Since then, Shelby has designed even more shirts for the show, and contributed all of the brilliant artwork from last year’s Coverville 500 show in Las Vegas. More recently, Shelby designed the album cover for the Squeeze Coverville Idol project, and is hard at work putting together the Breakfast-In-America-inspired design for the Breakfast in Coverville project for later this month.

Sharon emailed the show in mid-2005, asking if there was a comprehensive list of the song I’d aired on the show. I had a rough FileMaker Pro database that I had been maintaining for ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, which I sent to her. Later in the year, she emailed the list back to me, updated with all the songs that I had played since I put the list together. Since then, Sharon has voluntarily become the official Coverville Historian, logging every song I play, and sending me lists on a quarterly basis, which I then forward on to the licensing agencies with my hard-earned cash. Prior to some tech issues I ran into last summer, her lists would also be used to populate the Cover Song Search Database that you see at the top of the page. As soon as the tech issues are resolved (I know it’s been a year, but I really am working on it), the populating of the lists will resume. Sharon also took some terrific photos at Coverville 500, and I’ll link to them here.

Mr. Cris, the Coverville Constable, got tired of seeing all the junk that was getting posted on the Coverville Forums, and offered to help administer the board. Thanks to his work, the forums are pruned of spam, and humans are the only logins that get approved these days. I shudder to think what the boards would look like were it not for his diligence.

Dianne has been such a huge supporter of the show for so long. Her requests and suggestions were – and continue to be – spot on, but it wasn’t until I heard that she was a writer that the light bulb above my head illuminated. Last year, having to add hours to my consulting job and needing to devote time to some other projects, I feared I was going to have to end Lyrics Undercover. As a last measure, I asked Dianne if she’d be interested in writing the show for a split of what the Denver Post was paying me to produce it – the writing of the show being the most labor-intensive part of production for me – and she happily offered. She’s written the last 40 plus episodes and has uncovered some amazing information about the songs we all know and love. And she’s introduced me to a few songs I had never heard prior to recording them for Lyrics Undercover. Amazing work, Dianne.

If you’ve been a visitor to the blog for more than few months, you’ve seen the fantastic transformation that the site has seen recently. That redesign is due to the hard work of Randy Peterman, who I met via the local Denver Podcasters Meetup group. Randy’s skills as a web-designer, but more so his patience, we’re put to the test this last year as I emailed graphics, asked stupid question, and made impossible demands on the de-clutterifiying of Coverville. We’ve still got some work to do (RSS feed layout issues, Cover Song Database, etc.), but I couldn’t be happier with what Randy has done so far and look forward to even more.

Bryan Busch is the host of TheyNow, the They Might Be Giants podcast, as well as Stop Being Broken, a life-hacking video podcast, and it seems like we’ve been emailing forever. Recently, Bryan has been providing traffic analysis for Coverville.com, in order to make the site a much more useful and visitable destination. We’re barely into his first reports, but already I know it’s really going to help make the site easier to find, and easier to use.

Now, even though I call all these people out for their contributions, it’s but the tip of the iceberg. This show is what it is because of so many people, listeners, colleagues, inspirations. Your emails, phone calls, tweets, etc, all help to make Coverville great, and if I were to thank everyone individually for their support of the show, it wouldn’t fit on this blog!