I Will

This is an old Beatles song as done by bluegrass sensation, Alison Krauss, who has won more Grammy awards (27 wins, 41 nominations) than any other female singer in any genre and who ranks tied for second overall. This song was written by Paul McCartney, though Lennon-McCartney gets credit on the album cover, though it contains several signature McCartney marks. It was released on the album "The Beatles", the one with the green apple on the record.

This live version is nice, though the one on her album has a more prominent banjo line that I like much better. In fact, I think I'll include a link to it and to Paul McCartney's own recording (sans Beatles). 

This song gets me. It's got a permanent place on my love songs playlist.  Here's Alison live:

Here's the better version with the nice strong banjo line:

And here is Sir Paul all by his lonesome with his left-handed acoustic guitar with a very nice version of his song, "I Will".

I love that signature McCartney high note in there. This song expresses the longing for that one special person that makes your life complete. Here rattling down toward the end of my life, I realize what an awful hole it would make to lose that person and how much I have to trust in God to make it come out all right end the end.

Tom

Come and Go With Me to My Father's Big Old House

Okay, Audio Adrenaline is not solemn worship music. It's a bunch of hyper guys singing songs about Jesus and they do get a bit rowdy. I've included the studio version which keeps the song between the ditches a little better than it does when the boys are over-stimulated by being before a crowd.

That said, we stole this song and sang it for Sabbath School at Tyler. The kids loved it and my guitar playing youths began taking it to, shall we say, more energetic levels.  For an old guy like me the song gets me woke up on Sabbath morning so I can make it through the sermon without snoring. Hey, I'm old. It happens.  The pastor used to use all those white heads doing the Sabbath sermon head bob as his cue to wind it up and get everyone off to potluck before he lost half his congregation to the sandman.

Anyway, here's the studio version of a song that seems to be based on an old camp meeting song we used to do when I was a kid - "Come and Go With Me, To My Father's House".  We used to put that kind of enthusiasm into the original when we were kids.

 

 

Once in a while it's good to do an old-fashioned gospel song that makes you want to shout for joy. This song is one of those!

 

Tom

 

Talkin' 'bout My Generation

The Zimmers recreate the Beatles iconic Abby Road photo.

This week I got deep into a federal grant and didn't post any new songs. This is my secular song for the week. It's by a lovely group of senior citizens. The thing was first done about ten years ago. The group is called The Zimmers. Their lead singer here is 90 years old. He's since passed on and more boomers have filled in the lower ranks. They had a run on both Britain's Got Talent and America's Got Talent and people really love them.  It's appropriate that their first number is The Who's "Talkin' 'bout My Generation".

These guys are really fun and the song is on my mp3 player don't ya' know!

And THAT my friend was the world's oldest Rock Band. They are collectively 3000 years old between them. I find that inspiring and encouraging.

Just sayin',

Tom King

Miracle

Micah

It's another Sabbath and it's kind of lonely up here in Washington. I miss my Tyler Church. This song is dear to me. It was written by my sons Matt and Micah and sung by my daughter, Meghan, her friend Lexa Arante, and my son Matthew singing and on guitar and accompanied by Scott Houghton and Dunn Arante at the Tyler SDA church. Micah was already gone by then. I remember how nervous he would have been up front. He used to visibly tremble when he got up front to sing. What was amazing was how willing he was to get up front and tell a story or do something. His children's stories were epic.  Matt wrote the tune, but the lyrics were Micah's.



Here's "The Miracle is Me."

A Singing Frog

Okay, one of my favorite songs is sung by a banjo-playing puppet frog and I am not ashamed!  It's been done by other better singers like Kenny Loggins, Sarah McLachlan, Willie Nelson and Weezer, but my favorite by far is by Kermit the Frog as gently voiced by Jim Henson. A banjo playing frog singing on a lily pad in the middle of a swamp just appeals to me for some reason.

Here it is:

 

If you'd like to explore some other versions, here you are.  First up - Kenny Loggins:

Here's Sarah McLachlan's version:

And Willie Nelson's (next to Kermit, I like Willie's):

Here's Judy Collins' version:

Here's a version by (believe it or not) The Carpenters:

Here's Paul Williams. He wrote the original song. He gets all chatty before he sings it, but it's worth hearing if only to listen to the guy that wrote it.

And finally this sweet little version by Weezer and Hayley Williams

It's just a sweet little love song about yearning for peace and love and connectedness.  Seems a lot of people like that idea.

Tom KIng

Unfriended

I actually got unfriended by someone the other day. It's actually not that unusual for me. I tend to be on the outspoken side of the conversational spectrum and there are some folks who cannot bear to be contradicted. It's not just politics. I've lost both hard left and hard right "friends" who apparently were only friends so long as I did not bring up any good points when I disagreed with them.

My musical tastes are distinctly unserious, though I can blubber along over a sad love song with the best of them. Of course one of my favorites, "I've Got Tears in My Ears From Lying on My Back, Crying My Heart Out Over You" probably crosses over several musical genres in a way unlikely to draw it any Grammy or CMA awards.

One of my favorite unserious, yet at the same time strangely poignant musicians, is the inimitable Garrison Keillor, star to the long-running radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. That Keillor makes a living with a live radio show is a testament to both his talent and mule-headedness in this era of on-demand videos and Mp3 players.

This Keillor song addresses the issue I brought up in the first paragraph of this weblog - unfriending. In true Garrison Keillor fashion, the song gently sticks a pin in the over-inflated self-importance of the Facebook Generation.  I liked it so much that I put it on my Mp3 player!

Here's another version (he changes them almost every performance.  This is the funniest one and the one that I have on my Mp3 player.

The last one is my favorite version.

God and Dog

Our Daisy

This song makes me cry every time. I tried to sing it for church one time and it made me tear up. The woman who wrote it, Wendy Francisco is the wife of the Don Francisco who wrote "He's Alive".  She has in this brief song, captured what all of us, who have dogs as family members, feel about our canine family members.

She even turned this song into a children's book which also makes me cry. We lost our little gift from God dog, Daisy, last year which makes it worse when I listen to this song. She was everything this song talks about. Even the way we found her was something of a miracle. It was more like she found us. She was well behaved. Instantly house-broken, she had no bad habits to speak of and she came at a time when we needed her, even though we didn't know we did.

I firmly believe dogs also serve God like furry little angels and I pray that God returns my Daisy to us in the New Earth. I can hardly imagine heaven without her tagging alongside us everywhere we go.

I figure if God can resurrect something as complicated as a human being, our kind Father in Heaven won't mind giving us back the dogs that loved us and stuck by us through good times and bad. Someone once told me dogs couldn't be saved because they don't have souls. I don't think that's an issue. Daisy was knit to our souls in her short time here. I suspect that God will allow us to bring her along on our eternal journey. Why wouldn't He? 

Here's Wendy Francisco's version of her song, "God and Dog"