Not "Wagon Wheel" again - are there other popular band songs?

[Mandobart]

I would really like to hear bluegrass jam versions of Knockin' On Heaven's Door. We could make that the next overplayed song sensation.

It already is in my neck of the woods.

[Astro]

OK, this is the obligatory Wagon Wheel clip from yesterday. You have to do this to get hired now and it is the Farmers Market after all (yeah, they actually paid us something. Came out to about 1 dollar per hour each).

Anyway, I just started in a new band. This is only the second time we ever played this together and the other guys don't know the words so I sang lead but I got to use my new banjo. I've only been playing at clawhammer banjo about a month so cut some slack.

Its a little thin w/o much back up but they will get it quick and will sound better soon and I may switch off lead vocal on it. It was just recorded with a smart phone so sound is poor.

The kid on my mando just learned the 2 finger chords for the song a few hours prior. He usually does lead electric. He did a great job.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6B_...p=docslist_api

[journeybear]

Thank goodness it's just one verse and chorus!

Hey, I'm kidding. Mostly. And it could be worse, like nearly the whole song. That's what we've got here ...



What happened is, someone had put $20 in the bucket and requested this, repeatedly, for an hour, even though we kept saying we don't know it. This is mostly true, even though the bass player and I had played it together in another band almost every gig for two years, sometimes twice a night, because it was the guitarist/lead singer who knew all the words, not us. So for the last song, we got a friend to come up and sing it. The crowd went nuts, more than twenty people got up to dance - the biggest such reaction we've ever gotten - and fortunately a friend got most of it on video. It has gotten the biggest reaction of any of our videos as well.

Prophetically, our guitarist/lead singer quit the band a few weeks later - well, tried to kill the band, actually, snaking our gigs for his other band - and we replaced him with this guy. Ah, sweet irony!

[mandocrucian]

"Wagon Wheel"



Headed down south to the wand of the pines
I'm thumbin' my way into Noth Cawohwine
Stehwin' up the woad
And pway to God I see headwights
I made it down the coast in seventeen owahs
Pickin' me a bouquet of dogwood fwaawahs
And I'm a hopin' for Waweigh
I can see my baby tonight

[Chowus:]
So wock me mama wike a wagon wheew
Wock me mama anyway you feew
Hey mama wock me
Wock me mama wike the wind and the wain
Wock me mama wike a south-bound twain
Hey mama wock me

Wunnin' from the code up in New Engwand
I was born to be a fiddwer in an old-time stwing band
My baby pways the guitah
I pick a banjo now
Oh, the Noth countwy winters keep a gettin' me now
Wost my money pwayin' pokeh so I had to up and weave
But I ain't a tuhnin' back
To wivin' that ode wife no mo

[Chowus]

Wakin' due south out of Woanoke
I caught a twucker out of Phiwwy
Had a nice wong toke
But he's a headed west fwom the Cumberwand Gap
To Johnson City, Tennessee
And I gotta get a move on befoah the sun
I hear my baby cawwin' my name
And I know that she's the ownwy one
And if I die in Waweigh
At weast I will die fwee

[Chowus]

[John Lloyd]

After playing in a bar band Stateside for a few months during the early 1980s, I grew to hate Freebird, as in refusing to play it again for literally 30 years. Then one afternoon on the beach last year I fired up a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and a couple of coconuts and started plinking around with it fingerstyle on a ukulele, of all things. It worked surprisingly well with re-entrant tuning, and I've been fooling around with it on mandolin since then. I'm gonna bust it out next time we have an audience, just to see how they react. If no physical injury or property damage results, then you can bet I'll stick it in the set list, or at least the "stuff we'll do if requested" list.

Got a cover version of Hoyt Axton's Snowblind Friend ready to bust out, too. (That veers away from popular and smack into "You will play a happy song next.")

Around here it's the Jimmy Buffet songs that tend to be grossly overplayed, especially A Pirate Looks at 40 and Margaritaville. We still do 'em, though--cheerfully--and more often than not will throw in Cowboy in the Jungle, Woman Going Crazy on Caroline Street, and/or West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown during the course of the evening.

The good thing is that nobody cares if you never play the same solo twice, as long as you're in the right key. If they even notice that, by that time of night.

[journeybear]

As you can well imagine, there is the same - if not more so - overabundance of requests for Jimmy Buffett songs here. So much so that one place I played for a couple years with my former band had a strict no-Buffett policy. That place was high on the tourists' must lists, so we had to field lots of requests, and somehow steer them toward something similar but different. My current band has played there several times, and we did only one Buffett song - "Pencil Thin Moustache" - for two reasons: it fits our general style (swing, ragtime, jug band, skiffle), and it was the then lead singer's grandma's favorite song. We did playit there a few times, and received no hassle from management. I assume they didn't know it was a Buffett song, which is not surprising, since it doesn't sound like one.

Speaking of "Free Bird" ... Soon after I landed here over a dozen years ago I teamed up with a guitarist who did mostly classic country. We played three shifts a week at one of the popular downtown bars - OK, Capt. Tony's Saloon, the premises of which are where Hemingway drank when it was Sloppy Joe's, before that establishment moved down the street in protest over a $1 raise in rent. But I digress ... Anyway, at the time the club had a reputation as a songwriters' room, and it was proactive on that front. But it drew in a lot of tourists, who wanted to hear whatever they wanted, with as many yahoo requests as you can imagine. Since we were set up two paces from a corner of the bar, these were often hard to ignore.

Naturally, we would get the occasional "Free Bird!" from some drunk acting like a big shot. The guitarist had a mean streak and a drinking problem - he was one of the bar's best customers, in fact, downing a quart of Jim Beam shot by shot during a four hour shift every time we played - and his general response was the one-finger salute accompanied by "Here's your free bird!" I got tired of this (nice guy that I am) and devised a couple of ways to appease the requester and defuse the situation, in a less confrontational manner. One was to play it bluegrass-style at bluegrass tempo. It cracked people up, and sure got 'er done right quick. Just the first verse and chorus was all I needed to do, as patrons were howling with laughter and the requester was sufficiently abashed, perhaps even sort of satisfied. My other approach was to do it mock-reggae style, with an occasional "mon" and such, which got similar results. Your ukulele treatment is what brought this all to mind. Feel free to use this if you wish.

[John Lloyd]

The reggae treatment would probably fly here, actually.

[journeybear]

Yah, mon. So Jah seh.

Back in the day, my first foray down here, I was in a rock band that was known for, among other things, actually doing "Free Bird." It was in our set list. The triple leads at the end got pretty wild, played on electric guitar, amplified acoustic guitar, and electric mandolin (1950s Gibson EM-150). I also tweaked my pedals (compressor, mostly) to get a sound like a steel drum. This worked great on the few Jimmy Buffett songs we did, especially "A Pirate Looks At 40," one of his best songs IMO. Ah, good times!

[jaycat]

". . . Pickin' me a bouquet of dogwood fwaawahs . . ."

When I was a kid growing up in Virginia, our parents made sure we knew that the Dogwood was the OFFICIAL flower (or tree) of the Commonwealth, AND, that if found picking its flowers or otherwise defacing it, we could GO TO JAIL!!!

Looking back over the years, I suspect this was kind of an apocryphal scare tactic aimed at keeping kids off the lawn. But anyway, forewarned is forearmed. Even you, Elmer!

(Oh, I see he picks them in North Carolina, well, never mind).

[KEB]

I would really like to hear bluegrass jam versions of Knockin' On Heaven's Door. We could make that the next overplayed song sensation.

Last year's Delfest Academy's band scramble winner played it.

[Cheryl Watson]

"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" is one my band always did that was a crowd-pleaser--but we never played it at the hardcore bluegrass festivals.

[journeybear]

Yes, that's good one. Seems nearly everyone knows it and likes it. Ending with an a capella round is a great way to go.

BTW, he's still in trouble. Of all the states in the country, guess which two have dogwood as their state flower?

Then again, I don't see any references to it being protected. I remember there was a similar situation growing up in CT, where the state flower, mountain laurel, is protected. Fortunately, we had a bush on our property, and we could enjoy its delicate aroma whenever we wished while it was in bloom.

[jaycat]

Wow JB, you're right. Who woulda guessed?

You Ain't Goin' Nowhere is fun (we played it yesterday) but I like to sing the 'alternate' lyrics that mention McGuinn and Gunga Din.

[journeybear]

Woulda guessed what? That I'd be right? I tell ya, it's been a little tough, lately ... Whew!

Upon further review ... CT's Laurel Law was repealed in 1969. Never heard that then nor until now.