Yes, eventually we might get to some Thanksgiving music. But for now, I’m sticking with comedy. This is from the most recent Thanksgiving episode of Bob’s Burgers. Thanksgiving is Bob’s favorite holiday. Yet every year it is destroyed for him because he is living in a situation comedy. Actually, this episode turns out the best of any of them. Right now, you can watch the whole episode (which you should do): Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled.

We learn in this episode that Linda’s sister Gayle has been dating Phillip (Mister) Frond. But he dumped her, and she fell down and broke her ankle and now Bob has to go pick her up and of course everything goes wrong. In this scene, we see Bob pulling the wounded Gayle in a kid’s pool as he calls Linda and explains to her how to cook the turkey. He had previously called and told her that she would have to baste it. He explained how to baste and Linda responded, “That’s what basting is?!” Yes, like most things involved with cooking, it’s very easy. But this scene is much more tense:

I wrote to Jesse Ferguson asking him if there was any video of him playing a whole set. He seemed to indicate that there wasn’t. It’s remarkable. He has released four albums and he is incredibly talented, but he appears to only partially support himself from performing. That’s not a slight. One of my all time favorite bands (and probably the best punk band ever), Minutemen, did music part time. But it is sad that someone of such talent isn’t a bigger deal. Of course, he’s young and I’m sure he will only become more beloved over time.

He must also do teaching, because he has a number of instructional videos online too. I watched his video on bar chords. It was interesting, because I learned bar chords just over the course of long and painful failures. But he really systematized it. A couple of time while watching it I thought, “Oh, that’s why I do that!” This is particularly interesting given that in most things, I am the king of systematization. But clearly, not in music. I suspect he is a good teacher.

So given that I don’t have a set to offer you, I will go along with his suggestion and present one of his playlists. I’ve decided to go with his 21 Original Songs playlist. But I do wish he would get someone to shoot a 20 minute set at one of the festivals he plays at.

Afterword

Here is the list of the other songs we’ve featured this week:

• Smitten
• She Walks in Beauty
• Farewell to Nova Scotia
• Snowball Earth
• Alabama
• Zombie Love

We also featured him previously: Go Tell Aunt Rhody.

And as I mentioned, he’s released four albums:

1. New Old Songs
2. The Parting Glass
3. SHIFT
4. The Butcher Boy

The last song on Jesse Ferguson’s 2013 album, Shift, is “Zombie Love.” It’s kind of serious at the same time that it is totally silly. I mean, it’s a straight love song. But it is told from the perspective of a zombie. And it includes this wonderful refrain:

I may be dead
But my life began
The day that I bit you.

The video itself shows a playful side of Ferguson that we don’t usually see because the focus is on his gorgeous music. I really wish that I had known about this song for Halloween. I’ll have to remember next year to do a week of Halloween songs — and definitely include this one. Give it a listen. It’s really wonderful.

Over at his website, Jesse Ferguson wrote, “Music brings family and friends together for good times and provides a bond between the generations.” I quote that because it so closely matches what I think about music. I’ve had the experience many times where a bunch of people are visiting and people bring out instruments and have an impromptu jam session. It isn’t an opportunity for anyone to show off (although usually there is one person who stands out); it’s just a communal activity where everyone is bonding over a shared activity. This is why everyone should learn some music.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any music of Ferguson playing with other people. But that’s okay. He provides that same feeling with most of his solo work. Here he is performing Neil Young’s classic “Alabama.” The song is controversial. But really, it is just an invitation for the south to embrace modernity. As we saw in the life expectancy map that I posted yesterday, the south continues to lag behind the rest of the nation. And why? Because it hangs onto this notion that it was on the right side of the Civil War. And rather than embrace its changing demographics, Alabama instead tries to stop the “wrong kind” of people from voting.

But I don’t feel a lot of politics while listening to Jesse Ferguson’s version of the song. The emotional core of the song is a call to join modern America and stop pining for the Confederacy. And that is the feeling that comes through in this performance.

Here is another song from Jesse Ferguson’s 2013 album, Shift, “Snowball Earth.” It is nice to hear original folk music. It is a story song. He wrote of it, “The snowball earth theory suggests that snow/ice once covered the entire surface of the earth. This song imagines two lovers surviving it.” Ah, the imaginings of love by the young!

The Snowball Earth hypothesis is the idea that almost a billion years ago, the earth was entirely covered in ice. I don’t accept it. But the earth’s climate has been bizarre over very long time scales. I just don’t see how it all fits in with Milankovitch forcing. Certainly now we live in a period where the earth naturally has four periods: green Greenland; icy Greenland; icy Canada; and icy US. Glaciers over Mexico is hard to imagine. The oceans frozen is even harder to imagine. And there is no obvious mechanism for it to end. This all would have happened before the Cambrian explosion, however. So if the Snowball Earth really did exist, it could have been ended by life itself, giving more credence to the Gaia hypothesis.

Regardless, this is a beautiful song:

I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying listening to Jesse Ferguson this week. Part of it is just that I’m in the mood for that British Isles kind of folk music. Or I guess, in his case, it is Canadian. But it is all very similar to my American ear. Regardless, he does have an absolutely fabulous voice.

Today, we listen to a live version of “Farewell to Nova Scotia” off his 2011 album, The Parting Glass. It is a traditional Nova Scotian song, which he is performing on St Ann’s Bay, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He wrote, “It’s a shame I didn’t have the camera set up earlier since a bald eagle swooped over my head shortly before I hit record.” No big deal. I’ve had bald eagles swoop over my head. The music is a greater treat.

When I was around 18 years old, I came upon a piece of paper with my handwriting on it. It was a poem, “She walks in beauty, like the night; Of cloudless climes and starry skies…” I was shocked. Had I written that?! It couldn’t be, because I’ve always had a pretty good idea of just how good I am at whatever I do. And I was not capable of writing something that beautiful.

I soon realized that I had written it down as part of an exercise in a music theory class where I had to write music to a poem. And clearly, I had picked Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty.” I’m sure it has been set to music dozens if not hundreds of times. I was pleased to find that Jesse Ferguson had done the same thing on his 2014 album, The Butcher Boy. It’s as beautiful as the poem itself:

Here we are with another week of morning music. I had an idea for a theme, but I drank a beer, and that is really all that it takes to totally upset my thinking patterns. But last week, I featured Jesse Ferguson singing a beautiful rendition of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody.” And I was so taken with it that I thought he would make a good week’s worth of music. And then commenter Rick encouraged me to do so. I don’t know much about the guy, but I think there is another material from him to just jump in and see what I learn.

So let’s start with his song “Smitten” off his 2013 album, Shift. He says it is a love song based on the “ten plagues of Israel.” I think he means the ten plagues of Egypt, but whatever. This song reminds me a bit of Nick Drake.

This week’s songs from grammar school have turned out to be better than I had expected. And we are going to end by listening to perhaps the best: “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie.

He wrote the song in response to “God Bless America” by Irving Berlin. Guthrie apparently considered the song complacent. I’ve always found it somewhat nationalistic, although it does have the line “guide her” — something most Americans would think unnecessary. “This Land Is Your Land” is an obvious liberal anthem because it is aspirational.

But one verse of the song is generally removed, which makes it much more political. The original sixth verse is:

We didn’t sing that verse in public school.

I’m finally back home, so if you think my work has been slipping recently, I should be back up to my usual quality of work tomorrow. Today, we are going to listen to “On Top of Old Smoky.” This is another of those songs that were so well know that we had parodies of it. In fact, I remember singing “On Top of Spaghetti” in the third grade. According to Pete Seeger, parts of the song date back to the Elizabethan period, but that may be folklore. But there is no doubting that the song is old. Seeger seems to have been the first guy to nail down the version that we now know. Previous versions don’t sound much like it.

The song was made famous in 1951 with a recording by The Weavers. It’s well made. But it doesn’t exactly inspire me.

The “Caisson Song” was supposedly written in 1908, although the lyrics we all know come from 1918. That makes sense given that I always thought the song was from World War I. The truth is that I’ve never known what a caisson is. I just looked it up. It’s “a chest or wagon for holding or conveying ammunition.”

The song itself reminds me of myself playing with army men when I was a little boy. It’s such a sanitized vision of war. And it makes me wonder about having children sing it in school. It comes back to that usual notion that kids must be protected from sex, but war is just fine, even though sex is part of all lives and war is not.

I wish I could find some great version of the song. This is about as good as it gets. It is by Robert Weede created as part of the war effort during World War II.

Generally, when a song seems to make no sense whatsoever, it is a religious song. That is certainly the case with today’s song, “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.” When I was a kid, I thought it very odd indeed. It is kind of tautology: she will come when she comes. But more than that, what really bothered me was how she could be riding six white horses. It was only later that I learned the line was, “She’ll be driving six white horses.” But I’ve always been bad about that kind of thing.

According to Wikipedia, it is about the second coming of Jesus. And the “she” is not a woman (Of course!) but the chariots that Jesus will be riding on. You have to remember that this next time he comes, he’s going to be pissed off — kicking ass and taking names.

This version is by country and rockabilly legend Ramblin’ Tommy Scott. It’s actually pretty damned fun. I especially like the woman on accordion. But I don’t know who she is.