David Bowie Cover of the Week: Paul Marinaro performs “Shadow Man”
Buffalo-born, Chicago-based vocalist Paul Marinaro performed at the 2026 Lewiston (NY) Jazz Festival last week with his Chicago quintet, featuring Tom Vaitsas on piano, Mike Allemana on guitar, John Tate on bass and Neil Hemphill on drums. Marinaro is an internationally acclaimed jazz vocalist who returned to Western New York, which is also where I’m from, for the festival. Presumably, someone in the audience recorded this apparent bootleg of the group performing Bowie’s “Shadow Man,” which, despite being a bootleg—the type of recording I tend to avoid—is my choice for “cover of the week.”
“Shadow Man” is a fairly obscure Bowie song, which he originally recorded in 1971 and then re-recorded for the Toy project in 2000. Although it is not one of my favorite Bowie songs, the fact that I rarely encounter it as a cover made this far more appealing than the abundant covers of “Heroes” and “Space Oddity” that I encounter every week.
What’s more, there’s much I like about Marinaro’s performance. The jazz arrangement works well for this song—maybe better than the original—really! The song is slow, which to my hearing works better in this jazz style. Both of Bowie’s recordings come off as almost turgid.
I had never heard Marinaro before, but I was impressed by his voice and delivery. That said, for me, the real star is who I assume to be Allemana on jazz guitar. For a song that, under the master himself, seemed to be missing something, the guitarist in this band found it. Altogether, I really like how this sounds, and, though I don’t know if this is a momentary reaction or one that will endure, I actually like this performance of the song more than either of Bowie’s. I know, sacrilege!
I seldom have this reaction, even to very strong and innovative covers. The last time I did was when I heard the Cynz’s cover of “Can’t Help Thinking About Me,” which was also an obscure, early Bowie song. In both that case and this one, it helped the artists interpreting the material that Bowie’s original versions were not his strongest works. That leaves new artists a lot of room to run with, which is what Marinaro did here.
About the video itself—it is not the best. I like that whoever took it captured Marinaro talking about the song. Marinaro takes the song to be about “your future self looking at you in your present.” It is rare for a performer to discuss what he thinks a Bowie song is about, and since this is not a song that I have thought much about, I found his comments genuinely insightful. On the other hand, both the audio and visual quality are bootleg-level, not professional-level, which would have been enough for me to move on to the next video if either the performance itself hadn’t been as enjoyable as I found it to be or the choice of song had been more common. So, this is definitely worth checking out, and I’ll be on the lookout for an opportunity to see fellow WNYer Marinaro live for myself in the future.