Pretty Daughter - The Bad Livers

 Pretty Daughter is a song that I would call "murder ballad adjacent". I've always felt like there's something ambiguously creepy about the father/narrator, but nothing concrete. Unlike most murder ballads, it's the "boy from the town" who gets the wrong end of the pick axe, not the woman. Billy Strings took the original lo-fi, kind of messy original & turned it into a powerhouse, building on what Jeff Austin had done with it earlier. Billy emphasizes the opening melody and really turns it into a riff. The song only has 2 chords, Gm & F. Billy plays with a capo on the 3rd fret, so he's playing in position for Em and D. Em has all the same notes as G major, so there's a lot of familiar runs available, with emphasis on different starting & ending notes. As of this writing, bmfsdb.com shows that Billy Strings has performed Pretty Daughter 68 times, with it showing up in 6.75% of shows. Secondhandsongs.com doesn't list any covers for Pretty Daughter, but I know of a few.

Here's one pre-Alex

And one with Alex.

The Bad Livers

The Bad Livers were a rowdy string band from Austin. Although I doubt they would like the description, they sounded like a cross of folk, bluegrass & punk. Maybe like the Velvet Underground of acoustic music, not a ton of people knew about them but a lot that did started a band. Pretty Daughter comes from an album with one of the greatest titles of all time - Delusions of Banjer.

Covers

There aren't a ton of other covers of Pretty Daughter other than those by Billy Strings. Here's a nice one by The Kitchen Dwellers. They get into Pretty Daughter at about the 7 minute mark.

Here's a great clip of Jeff Austin & Bill Nershi playing Pretty Daughter with The Travelin' McCourys from way back in 2012.

Here's another of Jeff with his own band, featuring Kyle Tuttle, who now plays with Molly Tuttle's Golden Highway band.