Songs I Know

These are the songs I play from my Songbook Pro. I probably know several dozen more but they just wander in and out.

 

Act Naturally                                                 Buck Owens

All Your Favorite Bands                                Dawes

 

Back Home Again                                          John Denver

Blowin' in the Wind                                       Bob Dylan

Both Sides Now                                             Joni Mitchell

 

Carefree Highway                                           Gordon Lightfoot

Chittlin' Cookin' Time                                     Sierra Ferrell

City of New Orleans                                       Steve Goodman

Clay Pigeons                                                   Blaze Foley

Come On Up To the House                            Tom Waits

 

Desperados Waitin' For a Train                      Guy Clark

Did She Mention My Name?                         Gordon Lightfoot

Don Quixote                                                   Gordon Lightfoot

Don't Be Tough                                              Jason Isbell

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right                   Bob Dylan

Down Around Biloxi                                      Jesse Winchester/Buffet

Dublin Blues                                                   Guy Clark

 

Early Mornin' Rain                                         Gordon Lightfoot

 

Feelin' Good Again                                         Robert Earl Keen

Flag Decal                                                      John Prine

 

Gentle On My Mind                                       John Hartman

Grampa Was A Carpenter                              John Prine

 

 

 

Hallelujah                                                       Leonard Cohen

Hello In There                                                John Prine

Hickory                                                           Slaid Cleaves

House of The Rising Sun                               Traditional

 

I Remember Everything                                 John Prine

I Shall Be Released                                        Bob Dylan

I'll Be Here in the Mornin'                             Townes Van Zandt

I've got a name                                               Jim Croce

If You Could Read My Mind                         Gordon Lightfoot

 

Junkyard                                                         Slaid Cleaves

 

Katyusha                                                        Traditional Russian

Kentucky Morning                                         Darrell Scott

 

L.A. Freeway                                                  Guy Clark

Leavin' on a Jet Plane                                     John Denver

Let It Be                                                          Lenin/McCarthy

Like Summer's Endin’                                    Steve Bonafel

Little Bird                                                       Jerry Jeff Walker

Live Forever                                                   Billy Joe Shaver

Lodi                                                                CCR

Lover's Cross                                                  Jim Croce

 

Magnolia Wind                                               Guy Clark

Mississippi You're On My Mind                    Jesse Winchester

Mister Bojangles                                            Jerry Jeff Walker

Mr. Tambourine Man                                     Bob Dylan

 

Navajo Rug                                                     Ian Tyson

 

One More River to Cross                               Bob Weir/Josh Ritter

Only A River                                                  Bob Weir

Operator                                                          Jim Croce

Our Town                                                        Iris DeMent

Out in the Parking Lot                                    Guy Clark/ Darrell Scott

 

Pancho and Lefty                                           Townes Van Zandt

Paradise                                                          John Prine

Poems, Prayers and Promises                        John Denver

Puff The Magic Dragon                                 Peter Yarrow/Leonard Lipton

 

Quick As Dreams                                           Slaid Cleaves

 

Ripple                                                             Grateful Dead

 

Sam Stone                                                       John Prine

Shelter From the Storm                                  Bob Dylan

Song For a Winter's Night                              Gordon Lightfoot

Spanish Boots of Spanish Leather                  Bob Dylan

Speed of the Sound of Loneliness                  John Prine

Step Inside My House                                    Guy Clark

Stuff That Works                                            Guy Clark

Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down                       Kris Kristofferson

Sunny Side/Forever Young                            Carter/Dylan

Sweet Baby James                                          James Taylor

 

 

 

Take Me Home, Country Roads                     John Denver

Tecumseh                                                       Townes Van Zandt

That Old Time Feelin'                                    Guy Clark

That's How Every Empire Falls                     R.B. Morris (John Prine)

The Cape                                                        Guy Clark

The Family Reserve                                       Lyle Lovett

The Times They are A-changin’                    Bob Dylan

To Live Is To Fly                                           Townes van Zandt

Trouble in the Fields                                      Nanci Griffith

 

Vincent Black Lightning                                Richard Thompson

 

Wagon Wheel                                                 Secor/Dylan

Walkin' Back To Georgia                               Jim Croce

West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown          Jimmy Buffet

Where Have All the Flowers Gone                Pete Seeger

Whiskey                                                         Trampled by Turtles

Whistle and Fish                                            John Prine

Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald                   Gordon Lightfoot

 

You Aint Goin' Nowhere                                Bob Dylan

You Are My Sunshine                                    Zach Bryan

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome               Bob Dylan

Youngstown                                                    Bruce Springsteen

 

Originals

 

Double Lines                                                  Original

Fare Thee Well Rock and Roll                       Drop

In A little Boys' Soul                                      Original

Missin' Mason                                                Original

Princes of Loveland                                       Original

She Knows                                                     Griffin/Peebles

Sing Out                                                         Original

Tears in Texas                                                Original

The Ballad of John and Paul                          Original

The Day Is Done                                            Original/Longfellow

The Nick & Zack Song                                  Original

This Old Cracked Guitar                                Original

What I Got                                                     Original

Whatshername's Song                                    Original

 

 

A Lucky Night for Goldy

 

There’s a memorable Far Side panel where a goldfish emergency transpires on a stage - a broken bowl, flopping fish - and a member of the audience is standing up and says “Why, yes, I’m an ichthyologist!” The caption says: A lucky night for Goldy.

In A Prayer for Owen Meany, the titular character is doomed for a particular ending, “THE SHOT” the boys call it. Throughout the novel, Owen and the narrator John Wheelwright - amidst the typical madness of characters and plots and all that Irving stuff – practice an odd, highly choreographed and complex basketball shot, obsessively. The final scene of the novel shows you why and it is heart-wrenching and amazing.

It could’ve been chaos and perhaps looked so. The twins are just weeks old and there I am in the kitchen washing bottles, organizing them, filling them, and warming them. Over and over again. There is precious breast milk to manage and divide out. There was Enfamil and ratios and math, more math than I’d thought, percentages and stuff. There were timings and schedules and to-dos and constant juggling and re-prioritizing.

There was the procurement of goods – diapers, wipes, onesies, formula… diapers – and the rotating of the stock and one day it just hit me: No other job path could have better prepared me for taking care of twins than the restaurant business. I’d spent nearly twenty years of my working life, both front and back, in the business by then. It seemed uncanny how it all coalesced. Food costs and recipe development gave me the math; kitchen management, the organizational skills; the improvisation that it takes to keep the priorities straight and get the job done that is the dance of all waiters and bartenders and line cooks and hosts made the sudden swings manageable and, honestly, kept it interesting.

As I continued on as a stay-at-home-parent, I saw this all more and more. Now, I was never a good enough Presbyterian to really get on board the whole predestination ride, but…

Kismet?

Karma?

Sheer dumb luck?

Maybe, though, maybe we do everything for a reason. Maybe absolutely every move you make, every thought you have, all of it, is terribly important – essential.  We just don’t know, always, just quite how.

So, earlier this week I was our local SongFarmers event here – basically just a good old-fashioned hootenanny - at the local library and a woman sang a song and another joined her in the chorus. I just barely recognized the song and can’t remember it now to save me, which is, arguably, not helping the narrative. All the same, it was great, and the song sounded sweet and it was a nice moment.

Across the room from her, a younger fellow sat and listened. He asked if he could tell us all something and proceeded to say that as long as he’d been in the local music scene, he’d always wanted to hear these two, unrelated artists (in fact they don’t really even know each other) sing this song, in particular, together. (Again, what song would help, but I can’t imagine how I’d find out. The style of performance, ‘round-robin’ it’s often called, is fleeting and the moments come and are, as quickly gone.)

Now, what struck me about it, and him as well, is that the whole scene was so incredibly unlikely. Here’s a song, they both know, they’ve both learned and practiced and played for years and, of this one particular evening, it comes together - out of the beautiful void - in the presence of the one guy who’d always wanted it to happen. He was physically and emotionally stung by the serendipity of it all.

Weird.

I know, for a fact - although I could never verify the numbers - that there are thousands (tens, hundreds) of folks like me and my SongFarmer compatriots playing songs and learning tunes and practicing riffs and improving tone in their basements or music rooms or porches or parlors every damn night. I belong to guitar forums and acoustic performers pages and even get ukulele posts fed to me by FB because, well, correctly for once, they’ve determined that’s my vibe. I certainly don’t mind; I like knowing ya’ll are out there.

Sometimes folks perform a tune and post a YouTube video and a link on FB (which FB loathes and is trying to end) and a handful of people might look at it, perhaps like it, but, at the very least acknowledge it. I love these. Like the “’zines” of the eighties and nineties, or the old recordings made for a few bucks on a 45 or a little self-published chapbook of poetry, they show me what’s important to you. And they show me, fundamentally, that what we do has meaning, worth and is good – always good.

But, back, just one more time, to the cold quiet basements and hot, steamy summers picnic tables where we labor at it all. I feel we are doing it for a reason, always, that, again, even in that seeming silence, we are not doing it for naught, now way… never.

I secretly imagine a scene where aliens land and one little guy comes out, looking annoyed, and says that if someone can grant his one request then all of earth will be spared. “Can anyone,” he asks sheepishly, “show me how the chords in the chorus of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind work? Is that a B minor in there or what?”

And I’ll hold up my hand and say: “Why, yes, yes I do know that part.” And the world will be saved because I’ve played that song to the void a million times.

Glad to help.

 

Here's a link to the SongFarmers page, if you are curious.