In Good Old Colony Times
[Download lyrics and chords--PDF]

In good old colony days,
When we lived under the King,
Three roguish chaps fell into mishaps,
Of whom I mean to sing.
Of whom I mean to sing,
Of whom I mean to sing,
Three roguish chaps fell into mishaps
Of whom I mean to sing.

The first he was a miller,
The second he was a weaver,
And the third he was a little tailor,
Three jolly rogues together.
Three jolly rogues together.
Three jolly rogues together.
The third he was a little tailor
Three jolly rogues together.

The miller he stole corn.
The weaver he stole yarn.
And the little tailor he stole broadcloth
To keep the three rogues warm.
To keep the three rogues warm.
To keep the three rogues warm.
The little tailor stole broadcloth for
to keep these three rogues warm

The miller got drowned in his dam,
And the weaver got hung in his yam,
And the sheriff clapped paws on the little tailor
With the broadcloth under his arm.
With the broadcloth under his arm.
With the broadcloth under his arm.
And the sheriff clapped his paws on the little tailor
With the broadcloth under his arm.

*    *    *

The tune and lyrics are in the public domain unless otherwise noted.

The recording © copyright 2010 by Stephen Griffith and may be used by permission of the copyright holder. A note about the recording: This recording of “Dark as a Dungeon” is a rehearsal demo, with click track, recorded for YouTube on a Zoom Q3 using my 1968 Gibson Dove. The audio tracks (not used on YouTube) were recorded using two Rode Condenser Studio Microphones on a Zoom Handheld 4-trek 24-bit Recorder.

This Merle Travis song is included her because it is #155 in song-catcher Alan Lomax’s book The Folk Songs of North America (in the English Language). Lomax writes, this song, along with Sixteen Tons, “conform so superbly to our native ballad tradition that they have already gone into oral circulation throughout the English speaking world.”

I first heard this song sung by Merle Travis with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their classic Will the Circle Be Unbroken album. Recently at one of our Tuesday Night Song Swappers session we sang it with three melody variations at the same time. It was not pleasant. But melody variations are par for the course with oral circulated songs.

Dark as a Dungeon
[for chords and lyrics download PDF]

Come listen you fellers so young and fine
Oh seek not your fortune
in the dark dreary mine
It will form as a habit and seep in your soul
Till the stream of your blood
is as black as the coal.

It’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where danger is double
and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It’s dark as a dungeon
way down in the mines.

It’s many a man I’ve known in my day
Who lived just to labor
his young life away
Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine
A man will have lust
for the lure of the mine.

It’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where danger is double
and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It’s dark as a dungeon
way down in the mines.

The midnight, the morning,
or the middle of the day
It’s the same to the miner who labors away
Where the demons of the death
often come by surprise
One fall of the slate
and you’re buried alive.

It’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where danger is double
and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It’s dark as a dungeon
way down in the mines.

I hope when I’m gone and the ages shall roll
My body will blacken
and turn into coal
Then I’ll look from the door of my heavenly home
and pity the miner a-diggin’ my bones.

It’s dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where danger is double
and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It’s dark as a dungeon
way down in the mines.

* * *
The tune and lyrics are in the public domain unless otherwise noted.

The recording © copyright 2010 by Stephen Griffith and may be used by permission of the copyright holder. A note about the recording: This recording of “Dark as a Dungeon” is a rehearsal demo, with click track, recorded for YouTube on a Zoom Q3 using my 1968 Gibson Dove. The audio tracks (not used on YouTube) were recorded using two Rode Condenser Studio Microphones on a Zoom Handheld 4-trek 24-bit Recorder.

Acres Of Clams
[for chords and lyrics download PDF]
I’ve traveled all over this country,
Prospecting and digging for gold.
I’ve tunneled, hydraulicked and cradled,
And, I have been frequently sold.

And I have been frequently sold,
And I have been frequently sold,
I’ve tunneled, hydraulicked and cradled,
And, I have been frequently sold.

For one who gets riches by mining
Perceiving that hundreds grow poor,
I made up my mind to try farming,
The only pursuit that is sure.

The only pursuit that is sure,
The only pursuit that is sure,
I made up mind to try farming
The only pursuit that is sure.

So, rolling my grub in my blanket,
I left all my tools on the ground,
And started one morning to shank it
For a country they call Puget Sound.

For a country they call Puget Sound,
For a country they call Puget Sound,
And started one morning to shank it
For a country they call Puget Sound.

No longer the slave of ambition,
I laugh at the world and its shams,
And I think of my happy condition
Surrounded by acres of clams.

Surrounded by acres of clams
Surrounded by acres of clams
I’ve tunneled, hydraulicked and cradled,
And I’m surrounded by acres of clams.

* * *
The tune and lyrics are in the public domain unless otherwise noted.

The recording © copyright 2010 by Stephen Griffith and may be used by permission of the copyright holder. A note about the recording: This recording of “Acres of Clams” is a rehearsal demo recorded for YouTube on a Zoom Q3 using my 1968 Gibson Dove. The audio tracks (not used on YouTube) were recorded using two Rode Condenser Studio Microphones on a Zoom Handheld 4-trek 24-bit Recorder.

[Thornton] Wilder taught me that what a writer deals with is the unspoken, what people see or sense in silence. (from Sol Stein in “Stein on Writing”–Chapter One)

The other day I went to the grocery store for my wife. She’d given me a list of items to purchase and I immediately set it down on the counter. Later she left for school, and in the other car I left for the store. Having forgotten the list I ran back to the house, grabbed the paper off the counter, and started back to the store. As I walked into the store I retrieved the list from my pocket and glanced at it. It was a shopping list, but not for the grocery, but for a few items needed from the drugstore. I’d picked up the wrong list.

If I was writing the scene  I could write only what I saw. A man in a hurry runs into a grocery store, glances at a piece of paper, stops suddenly, then looks up, embarrassed and turns around to leave the store. He returns to his car, shakes his head and texts his wife about the mix-up. His wife immediately texts back and tells him not to worry about it, she will pick up the groceries later. That would be empirical writing, or writing just what you see. I could add details but basically that’s the scene.

But the crux of the scene, or the crucible, is what happened in the man’s head. And to me, this is what Wilder was saying. The real story is in the silence of the car. The real job of the writer is to explode the silence of the car and let us see into the crucible.

Since this is a true story I can tell you what happened. When I noticed the list I was embarrassed and went back to the car. I shook my head and texted Lorraine about the mix-up. As I hit the send button I heard my mother’s voice say, “Knucklehead” and laugh. A wave of despair washed over me and even though she’s dead for over ten years, I felt her presence. Seconds later I got a return message from Lorraine telling not to worry about it, she’ll pick up the groceries later. I felt a sense of relief and my mother’s apparition disappeared. Believe me, a novel could be written about the themes revealed in the silence of those few seconds.

For years books were piled on every step of the staircase to the second floor of my home. On the top of one pile was a novel by James C. Schaap, In the Silence There are Ghosts. My youngest daughter (at the time) loved the title and she would announce at random times, “In the silence there are ghosts.” On the drive back home the day of the apparition at the grocery store, I thought of Tory, and the book, and could only smile and say to myself, “Yes, I completely agree.”

Charles Dickens

In the last week of March in 1836, when he was twenty-four years old and only a few days before his marriage, Charles Dickens brought out the first number of the serial romance called The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, which everybody now calls “Pickwick’. It was his first book. It was also his best book. It was not indeed his best novel. In that sense it could hardly be; for it is not a novel at all. It is sufficiently obvious that it has not got the best plot; for it has not got any plot. . . . It will be enough to say here that what the young Dickens, newly famous and newly married, brought to his work at that moment, was a vitality as vast and so vivid that everything which it touched came to life.

–G. K. Chesterton

In the midst of a speech by Mr. Pickwick to the club, someone shouts “HUMBUG” and the chairman stopped the proceedings and the minutes show the ensuing conversation:

“The CHAIRMAN was quite sure the hon. Pickwickian [club member] would withdraw the expression he just made use of.

“MR. BLOTTON, with all due respect for the chair, was quite sure he would not.

“The CHAIRMAN felt it his imperative duty to demand of the honorable gentleman, whether he had used the expression which had just escaped him, in a common sense.

“Mr. BLOTTON had no hesitation in saying, that he had not—he had used the work in its Pickwickian sense. (Hear, hear.) He was bound to acknowledge, that, personally, he entertained the highest regard and esteem for the honorable gentleman; he had merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view.

“Mr. PICKWICK felt much gratified by the fair, candid, and full explanation of his honorable friend. He begged it to be at onceunderstood, that his own observations had been merely intended to bear a Pickwickian construction. (Cheers).

Surreal, but from that moment (on page 20 of my edition) I was hooked.

Pickwick to me, is like comfort food. Following Pickwick in his adventures will always lighten the load (real or imaginary) I carry.

The Paw-Paw Patch
Where Are My Pajamas?
Old John Braddelum
The Noble Duke of York
The Little Lady from Baltimore
The Green Grass Grew All Around
The Animal Alphabet
I Can’t Spell Hippopotamus
What Shall We Do When We All Go Out?
and the guitar track to Crooked Little Man.

Today, on January 6, 2010 I finished recording the vocal for Crooked Little Man, and the guitar tracks and vocals for the following:

All Work Together
Howdy Do
Michael Finnegan
Buffalo Gals
The Crawdad Hole
Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush
Everybody Happy
Head and Shoulders Baby

Now after Kevin mixes the songs, we’ll decide what insturmentation needs to be added. Thanks to Kevin Auman and Peralandra Studios

Lefties tend to be:

leaders, —YES
quick thinkers, —NO
exceptional, —YES
tend to earn more money, —NO
and are more likely to be homosexual. —NO

Some experts believe left-handed people are

highly intelligent, —YES
more independent, —NO
more resistant to social pressures, —YES
have more of an independent streak, —YES
more flexible, —NO
and more resilient than right-handed people. —NO

Whether my wife is correct or not, she knows me better than anyone so I won’t argue.

One additional note: My only left-handed daughter is Victoria and she is also an Aires and Rabbit (Chinese Zodiac) as I am. I find that strange.