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Who Juiced the Major Leagues?

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Protest Week

Today’s protest song (the Third Installment) in honor of National Protest Week is called Who Juiced the Major Leagues? It’s a song about baseball written about one year ago when a certain star hero baseball player was accused of and then admitted to using steroids. The song is patterned after Bob Dylan’s song from the early 1960’s Who Killed Davey Moore?

I’m posting this from the road on the way down to Mississippi so there’s not gonna be a whole lot of self-inflicted discussion about this song. There’s not much to say anyway. It’s a song about baseball. Baseball’s the American game. It’s a song about America. We’re all Americans. That’s it.

Tell me what ya think of the song.

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We Don’t March

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Protest Week

Okay. so here’s the Second Installment in honor of National Protest Week (which just happens to be this week, if you didn’t know). This is a song that I wrote way back in 2008, probably around the springtime. It’s called We Don’t March.

This one is a pretty straight-forward, over-the-top, preachy protest song. I don’t sing it out live anymore, and hardly ever play it around the house, except that I’m still really in love with the melody. I stole it from an old Carter Family song (again) called We Will March Through the Streets of the City. You can check out the lyrics to that one here and see the similarities. Or just go listen to it.

For one reason or another I find it pretty easy to rewrite Carter Family songs, probably because the melodies are timeless, but the words aren’t. Maybe the words are too. Words never go away. Maybe it’s the ideas, but I don’t think they were trying to say anything different than what I’m trying to say. It just sounds that way because a lot of their songs have the word “jesus” in them, and the word “god” and “lord” and “pray” and those seem to be strange words for a songwriter these days. Either they mean something different in 2010 than they did back in 1925 or maybe we all understand a little less about the words or ourselves.

Anyway, I wrote We Don’t March kind of as an anti-protest protest song, although I’m not sure it turned out that way. There were a lot of immigration rallies going on back in 2006 and 2007, and then, either they fizzled out or everyone turned their attention to something else. And that puzzled me a little. I always thought, and was brought up to believe, that Americans never give up and that they always lend a hand to someone in need. I guess that hand’s gotta be the right one though. So I wrote this one, and I suppose I’m kinda shaking my finger at everyone else and at myself (even if I don’t say that in the song).

The recording was done live at the Elbo Room on July 21, 2008.

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The Sinking of the Deepwater Horizon

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Protest Week

So, here’s the first song in honor of National Protest Week. This is a new one that I finished on Friday last week. I’ve had the chorus running around through my head for a few months now. I picked it up from the old Woody tune The Sinking of the Reuben James. It’s a song I’ve really always loved and I couldn’t quite understand why until I sat down and went about learning the guitar parts a few weeks back. Turns out it’s just an adaptation of the Carter Family’s Wildwood Flower, which is another really great song and probably one everyone knows, or should know, on guitar. Anyway, this new song kinda fell into place over the next couple weeks pretty easily. It’s called The Sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. It’s what you’d call a current-topical-protest-song, I guess.

I really struggled in the beginning with this one because writing a good protest song is really hard. I’d say 99% of them get up there on a high-horse and don’t ever come down. They preach and they yell and they don’t say very much. The first few drafts of mine were exactly like that and lots of other songs I’ve written are exactly like that (some of which I’ll post this week in honor of National Protest Week).

So, this song (hopefully) does not tell you what you oughta think or believe or be fighting. I think it just states some facts and then puts the bulls-eye right squarely where it oughta be placed.

Okay, that’s enough talking. Listen to this first installment of my protest songs in honor of National Protest Week and let me know what ya think.

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It’s National Protest Week

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It’s National Protest Week this week…at least that’s what I can gather from the news I saw on the old tube television last night…

Anyway…in high, devoted honor of this famous week I’ll commence to posting protest songs all week long…Monday through Friday at least…Monday’s song is a new one I wrote over the course of the last couple weeks…it was really a knock-down drag-out kind of song…but I guess that makes sense considering what it’s about…more on that tomorrow, though

The rest of the week I’ll dig up some songs from the past few years…a couple that I re-recorded, one a live version, and one that I, apparently, haven’t ever recorded…

It's National Protest Week
Protest this for protest week.
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Hammer ‘n’ Nail

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I almost didn’t get Hammer ‘n’ Nail done on time, but it’s 11:12pm and here it is. I just got back from a jugband show at Reggie’s down on the South Side. I skipped out on my check, I feel bad, I’m wearing tight jeans, my hair is greased up, my wife was up when I got home. I’m in no condition to write a song.

This song is a sketch of a song from a few months back and in no way finished and probably never will be finished, but I needed to do something today. I added a “gospel choir” effect and recorded through one condenser mic in the mono setting. I thought that was appropriate to capture the mood and feel of the moment. I’m pretty surprised this one clocked in at almost 3 minutes. I guess lots of obnoxious guitar notes will do that to a song.

What do you think?

Songwriting, home recording and vinyl records from Chicago folk singer and songwriter Andrew Francis.