Researching the Songs

Researching the Songs

Notice that here and there on the playlists you'll find links to other sites possessing lyrics or midi files or musical notation of the melodies.

It's delightful to me to go through the process of researching and discovering the stories and alternate lyrics of these songs. I'll hear a new song by someone, note down key words in the chorus and ask the singer what the name of the song is.

Then Google is my friend. I could spend hours and hours into the evening hours reading the history of some song.

Take "Free and Easy" for instance, I first heard Professor Dick L. sing this two years ago, with just three verses. One day after being unable to get the tune out of my head, and not remembering the words, I Googled the first line of the song, as I remembered it. "I'm a Lad that's free and easy" I came up with only one hit! Obviously needing more snippets of lyrics I changed the search to , in quotes,"Free and Easy" "country clown." Which gave me this, from the Minnesota Traditional Morris side wherefrom Dick learned the song, I believe. But the song is much older. Eventually I came up with this reference of it being a Scottish song from the 1850s, published as a broadside.

As time permits I'll include links to all of the songs we sing at our weekly pubsing.