In the beginning there were four or five of us at work and we decided we would sing for our Director who was retiring. So we came up with Aloha, Hit The Road Jack and something else I can't remember. We had three uke players, one guitar and my banjo. After that, we decided to come once a week at lunch and practice and play. I found four easy chord songs and passed them out: Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms, Wabash Cannonball, Ring The Banjo & Tom Dooley. Barden offered up a Marty Robbins song and Wayne offered up Back Home Again and MTA. I invited Craig from the 12th floor. We moved to my house and everyone dropped out but Wayne & Craig & me. I invited Marla and Gail. I injected This Little Light of Mine and Gulf Coast Highway because I was already playing them. Marla threw in Daniel (which is no longer on the list) We were doing open mics at Boulevard Music in Culver City and only had enough for time for three songs so we worked up based on that. Gail brought songs and we learned them but only played You're Sixty in performance I think. Then we got the pancake breakfast. We had 2 hours to fill. I threw a bunch of songs that Wayne & I had been playing at the Saturday Morning Bluegrass Meetup in Long Beach: It Takes A Worried Man, I'll Fly Away, etc (I Aint Gonna Be Treated This Away, Pallet On Your Floor, and Fair & Tender Ladies are from here) Then I thought, I'm writing all these songs- why not do them- We ended up doing one because I let them rewrite the melody and Gail loved it.) I gave everybody all of my originals and Wayne gave everybody every song he had ever sung. That ended up the problem.
I'm the organizer, so we were doing the playlist just in Alphabetical Order, because that seemed the simplest thing to do, Wayne and Marla said we should think up something different, but they would never work on it. So as I was compiling this new list, I threw the ballads in one pile and the quicker songs in another and then tried to combine them in some entertaining way.
The whole idea now is just to keep a movement forward. The singers get to pick what we want as we all learn and then replace things. But we still have 2 1/2 hours of stuff. The instrumentalists get to pick the things they want and we will showcase those as well.
I'm not really attached to half the songs here. MTA, Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms, Wabash Cannonball, Freight Train, Worried Man, This Little Light, Cotton Jenny, I'll Fly Away, Country Roads, can all disappear. I'm ready to move on. But we need to move on together doing things that everyone wants to do.
I need to give Oleeta and Richard and Nancy more songs to sing! I want fiddle tunes and banjo that Betsy and Renata and Ben can sail away with! I think we're on to something!
