“Feliz Meriton” is an orginal composition by my daughter, Irene (as you can read about here), who will be turning 7 in a week. Many, many meritons to her.

Full set list below. “Feliz Meriton,” “The Yodeler’s Christmas,” and “Make a World Brand New” were all new songs premiered at this show, much to the delight and/or dismay of the AARP:

Nino’s Steak & Seafood, December 21, 2010

• Winter Wonderland
• Mele Kalikimaka
• Winnebago Bay
• The Yodeler’s Christmas
• Christmas Time Is Here
• Stopper in My Hand
• Feliz Meriton
• My Seafaring Lassie
• You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch
• White Christmas
• Blue Christmas
• Make a World Brand New

“I’ve heard of Big 10 schools with representation…”

The exigent occasion for such poetry was — if I’m remembering this right — an attempt by the university’s administration to abolish part of the tuition & fee waiver for graduate assistants not working in their home departments (this would have had a big effect on English, for example, who drew teachers for their professional writing and other classes from places like the Law school) but to soften the blow with the announcement of a new, but kind of rinky-dink, dental benefit.

DETAILS: It sounds like I’m playing a guitar — my singing cowboy one? — rather than ukulele. Carrie Rentschler was a GEO member in the audience. GSAC was the company shop.

Download: 80335421

“Drunk Bus” is a song by Macomb, Illinois-based rapper Tre-P, and it falls into my favorite category of songs: namely, songs about the details of local public transportation, particularly buses.* In this case, that bus is the eponymous free shuttle that would take Western Illinois Universities from the clubs back to their dorm late at night. Here’s Tre-P, in full flash animation:

Watch for the secret interpolated shot at 1:46.

* Cf. The Viper and His Famous Orchestra, “Ich Bin Berlin” (on the Champaign, Illinois MTD bus route up North Prospect to the Meijer grocery store, “where parking’s the only sound”) and “Ukulele Rhythm” (about riding on the Blue bus–the 4W bus–that went from my place on Hill St. in Champaign to the International Cafe on Wright St. in Urbana where the orchestra and I would sometimes play of a Friday afternoon in the late 1990s).

Like most things I write, this came about as a consequence of trying to learn how to play something else. That something else in this case was “Ham Beats All Meat,” an old time song concerned with class warfare and how to eat it. Nothing should be read into the thought process that brought me from the existing song to this newly composed tribute to my lovely wife, Ann, and her sisters Katie and Mary.

Play along!

Chords

D / | / / | G / | / / |
D / | / / | A7 / | / / |
D / | / / | G / | / / |
D / | A7 / | D / | / / |

D / | / / | C / | G / |
D / | / / | G / | A7 / |
D / | / / | C / | G / |
D / A7 / | D / | / / |

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What you’re hearing is me with my five-dollar nylon string guitar, bought at the same estate sale in Riverdale, Maryland at which my wife and I found a Lyndon B. Johnson dart board (well pock-marked with use) and a oil-painted self-portrait of someone named Bertha Myrna in a jester’s outfit who we assume was at one time the owner of both the aforementioned items.

I’m recording this on a single mic through the Line 6 TonePort UX2, with the Gear Box on one of the guitar amp settings (I like the effect of that, as you can also hear here).

And thus ends 8 pre-programmed nights of Hanukkah. As it turns out, I wrote all of these posts on the weekend of December 20-21 right before I left Maryland. In fact, packing up this computer will be the last thing I do after I get back from closing out our bank accounts and dropping some clothing off at Value Village. I like the thought of these posts lining up and jumping out at their pre-arranged time as I’m driving through or by Frederick, Breezewood, Akron, Toledo, South Bend, Hammond, Waukegan, and Kenosha before I finally get to Milwaukee where I’ll give my wife and daughter a big hug and kiss and unpack the car for good after this ridiculous semester of living 792 miles away from them. So happy Hanukkah, and wherever this may find you, give someone you love a smooch from me.

for download

And here’s a five-minute’s worth attempt at multi-tracking a chorus of “Milwaukee Here I Come” by Lee Fikes. First track is vocals and ukulele together, second track is just cümbüş. I can’t remember the GearBox setting, but I think it was “rhapsody” or something like that.

for download

In any case, I had an idea for a title, the “First Round Polka,” and all I needed was a song to go with it. The only stipulations I set myself were that the song a) should follow the basic polka chord changes (i.e., “Tiger Rag” or “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”), b) should modulate into the key of the relative 5th for a trio section, and c) should be wordless except for a yodeled melody, and that melody should make some reference to the similarly wordless yodeled melody in the “Last Call Waltz.”

So this past Wednesday, I fooled around on the mandolin until the instrumental parts came together, and this afternoon I wrote the yodel. Here’s basically what it’s going to sound like.

The chords are:

F F F C7
C7 C7 C7 F
F F F Bb
E7 F C F

With the coda:

Gm E7 F D7
G7 C7 F

Now to write out the rest of it for practice on Monday.