Welcome to a house concert evening with guitarist/songwriter Paul Elwood
The fundamental absurdity of life is worth celebrating too! Here’s an example:
In the Navy, I knew a fella who noticed that roadkill was different, depending on what part of the country you were in. He proposed that a road trip in a car with a trunk and back seat full of coolers full of roadkill might be fun from say, west Texas to Flushing New York, depositing roadkill at points say, east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Was this art? Stupid, testosterone-fueled idiocy? Biological terrorism? I don’t know. But his proposition resulted in this next song… and I should point out that for your own good, I’d strongly caution you not to take any of the culinary advice I’m offering here seriously. If you’ve never tasted this particular kind of animal that’s a good thing and you can google the reason for that if you like, but in a nutshell: Besides humans, Nine-banded armadillos are the only known natural reservoir of “Mycobacterium Leprae”. In the southern United States, particularly in Texas and Louisiana, the disease caused by M. leprae is present in armadillos and has been linked to human cases of “Hansons disease”- also called – does anybody know? Yep, that’s leprosy, ladies and gents. So if you see a roadside taco stand featuring Armadillo meat, please don’t stop to try something new:
Often our house concerts will include an old favorite and here’s one you’re likely to hear. You may remember this as we do, from long-ago jammie-clad Saturday mornings in front of the TV.
You know what’s fun? Euphemisms. So much of our communication uses language that stands for something else- good, fascinating, frighting… delicious, you name it. Here’s a song about something delicious and I hope you like it as much as I do, or more.
Pumpkin Pie
My wife Debra and I recently took a ten-day trip to Ireland and we had just the best time! On the same day I stood on a thousand-year-old grave and held a two-week-old lamb in my arms. Ireland is splendid! The country, the language, history, everything! But the thing I found most delightful about Ireland is this (and I had no idea this was the case); the Irish do not swear! Not a single swear word did I hear for the entire trip! Instead of swearing when something go wrong, as you do when, say, smacking your thumb or spilling your Guinness, the Irish have this delightful custom of saying “fook”! So charming! We did hear an awful lot of “fook this” and “fookin’ that”. And so I was inspired to write a song about the fookin’ end of the fookin’ word. And as this seems to be an audience participation song, when it comes ’round, I hope you’ll belt out your fookin’ part:
You’ll never see our fookin’ like again
I used to answer guitar-related questions on Quora- it was great fun!
It started out as a way to respond to people who had questions about learning to play guitar that I thought I could offer some legitimate, useful advice to. I think that’s always true, but some of my entries are – I hope – also kind of amusing as well. Whether you play guitar or not, I hope you find them amusing too. Here are some actual questions presented by Quora users around the planet that I’ve answered somewhere on the spectrum between heartfelt sincerity and irresponsible cheekiness. here’s one: “Is it really okay to wear a cute hat while playing the acoustic guitar and singing a really cute and soft song”?
Guitar Hat
Here’s a song written by bassist Jerry Mayall. Jerry says that cats are waaaaaay cooler than dogs and I don’t disagree; Jerry wrote a song for us about that very thing.
Cool Jazz Cats
Quora question: “What’s the best instrument to play around a campfire”?
OF COURSE it’s a Tuba. Hands down, the best instrument to play around a campfire for several solid reasons.
Number 1, you (tuba campfire player) will generate stories that will last for decades. 30 years or more from the date of your campfire intubation (I may not be using this correctly), people will still be marveling at your verve and chutzpah and the precision with which you hammer out those blazing tuba riffs.
Secondly, when you run out of tunes, or when people ask you to please for crissake stop playing, you can pack the bell with ice-cold lagers. See? two excellent reasons for tuba camping.
Thirdly, tuba music, I have heard, is an excellent bear, raccoon and bigfoot repellent. you will need to sit up all night long gently oompa-ing into the forest, and your camping mates will sleep all the more soundly for hearing the rock-steady stream of tuba’d quarter notes echoing through the darkness. So bungi that instrument to the top of your sedan and head for the woods! You’ll be glad you left your guitar at home, imho.
Now here’s the response I got to that:
Sorry to disillusion you, but although tuba music is an excellent bear repellant, it acts like a mating call for moose. (I don’t know about Bigfoot.) And nothing, nothing, will stop a determined raccoon. ;-)
…and my response to that:
you can’t repel a moose in love by blowing through a tuba.
Not even when you’re camping on the island of Aruba.
Carib moose are not as rare as one might first have thought…
tempted to bring your tuba there? I’m recommending not.
And so “Caribbean Moose” was born:
Caribbean Moose
Kaiju is a Japanese word meaning “strange beast” or “monster”. In English, it’s commonly used to refer to a genre of films and television shows featuring giant monsters, especially those from Japanese movies like “Godzilla”. I have to tell you, in case you think I might be a good guy, one of the first things I taught my son to do when he wasn’t much older than my grandson is now was to point up to the sky and yell out “Rook! Godzirra!!
But here’s a song about a kaiju you’ve probably never heard of before:
CatZilla
Doom Scrolling
You folks lie in bed looking at bad news on your phones? Me too:
So many times I want to do the right thing. I know what it is, I know what I should do, but, you know. Here’s what happens instead:
Monkey Gets In The Way
Often my songs come from holidays or vacations, simply because there’s time to spend that isn’t otherwise allocated.
Family, work, business, job, social obligations- all that and more, right? The list is endless. Here’s a song that came from a trip to Yellowstone and a more gorgeous place you’d be hard-pressed to find. We entered the park and asked, as you do, will we see any buffalo today? The ranger assured us that we would and suer enough, there they were. Ladies and gentlemen, seeing buffalo in the wild in a place like Yellowstone is simply amazing! On a road cutting through this vast, beautiful natural preserve, traffic would stop in both directions while a buffalo herd sauntered slowly from one side to the other, and as the lead buffalo passed, he’d look at you with those huge black eyes. And I thought to myself “I wonder what the buffalo think about all these stinky, loud visitors”? So here’s one possibility about what a buffalo might think as he’s crossing the road. And, as an added treat- has anyone ever heard what a buffalo sounds like? No? Good, then it sounds just exactly like I’m going to demonstrate.
Often my songs come from holidays or vacations, simply because there’s time to spend that isn’t otherwise allocated. Family, work, business, job, social obligations- all that and more, right? The list is endless. Here’s a song that came from a trip to Yellowstone and a more gorgeous place you’d be hard-pressed to find. We entered the park and asked, as you do, will we see any buffalo today? The ranger assured us that we would and suer enough, there they were. Ladies and gentlemen, seeing buffalo in the wild in a place like Yellowstone is simply amazing! On a road cutting through this vast, beautiful natural preserve, traffic would stop in both directions while a buffalo herd sauntered slowly from one side to the other, and as the lead buffalo passed, he’d look at you with those huge black eyes. And I thought to myself “I wonder what the buffalo think about all these stinky, loud visitors”? So here’s one possibility about what a buffalo might think as he’s crossing the road. And, as an added treat- has anyone ever heard what a buffalo sounds like? No? Good, then it sounds just exactly like I’m going to demonstrate.
I had a bass student that kept pet tarantulas (I know, it takes all kinds). In truth she’s a lovely person and documented the lives of her pets on FaceBook, which I thought was way cool because I don’t know shit about tarantulas (well about most things, to be honest) and it was interesting to see her share her passion. It was just before Christmas and she posted a picture of one her spiders (“Babs”, I think) wearing a little photoshopped santa hat… and that’s how “SantaRantula” came to be:
You’re bringing toys for girls and boys?
We hope that’s not the case-
Instead please bring us bugs, each with a
chocolate car-a-pace!
SantaRantula
They say that having a creative outlet can be good for you and I believe that is true. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s a form of therapy. Here’s how I manage to keep from howling at the moon, most of the time:
Six String Shrink
I mentioned my grandson earlier and I gotta say, it seems to me that little boy’s main job is to make his grandpa – actually, i’m Paul so I’m gonna be “GrandPaul” unless he picks literally anything else to call me. But I wrote this for Miles. It’s probably one of the closest things to an honest-to-god song that I have. Ladies and gentlemen, “to spend a day with you”
To Spend a Day With You
We had some friends years ago and their second child was, even so young, just brilliant. An incredibly talented young man, intellectually, artistically and musically. And so I would ask them this question regularly:
You’re Absolutely Sure That’s Not My Kid?
“Why Don’t You Do Right?” (originally recorded as “Weed Smoker’s Dream” in 1936) is an American blues and jazz-influenced pop song usually credited to Kansas Joe McCoy. A minor key twelve-bar blues with a few chord substitutions, it is considered a classic “woman’s blues” song and has become a standard. Singer Lil Green recorded a popular rendition in 1941, which Peggy Lee recorded the next year – accompanied by Benny Goodman – and made one of her signature songs.
The song appeared in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, performed by actress Amy Irving as the singing voice for Jessica Rabbit.