About 10 years ago, the late singer-songwriter Joe Wrabek came up with an idea: He wanted to do a CD of other artists covering his songs. He tossed this idea out to a bunch of his colleagues and asked if anyone was interested. A bunch of us volunteered. He sent us a songbook of all of his material and asked us each to pick a song, record it in our own style, and send it along to him.
A few months later, the Cuppa Joe! CD was released. I was pleased and proud to be included.
My contribution was a cover of Joe’s song, “No Good Songs About the War.” Here is what Joe wrote about the song in his New Joe Songbook: 2016 Edition:
[The song] was prompted by someone asking online, “How come there’s no good songs about the war?” The quick answer is, “Because no one’s been writing any”; there are rules for writing protest songs, and they’ve been largely ignored. I decided instead of lecturing—I hate lectures—I’d just go write one, to show how it was done. Deathgrass [Joe’s band] recorded it, and we sent it off to a “Can you write like Dylan?” contest in England, where it won first prize. It does answer the question, “How come there’s no good songs about the war?”
“No Good Songs” is one of the relatively few serious songs that Joe wrote. He was much better known for his (sometimes rather twisted) sense of humor. Dead animals were one of his specialties. Really. A sampling of titles will give you the idea of where his humor went:
- “Earwigs in the Eggplant”
- “Selling Off My Body Parts”
- “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas”
- “Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire”
- “Bungee Jumpin’ Jesus”
- “Bluebird on My Windshield”
- “Lick Your Dinner Plate Clean”
I could go on, but you see what I mean. There are many, many more — some total fantasy, some commentaries on real life, all pretty much guaranteed to make you laugh. If you want to hear more, try these two pages where you can find many of his recordings: Joe Wrabek and Joe Wrabek (again).
But I digress….
I have as good a sense of humor as anybody, and in fact it was Joe’s work that helped give me the final push to actually put some of my own humor into publicly available music (and poetry). But as I browsed through Joe’s songbook trying to find a song to cover, the funny ones just didn’t appeal to me for some reason. I could listen to them and chuckle, but I just couldn’t hear myself performing them.
Instead, I kept coming back to “No Good Songs About the War.”
Maybe I was just in a serious mood during that period. But the song resonated with me, and I decided that was the one I was going to record.
But… Joe’s version is sort of a country/bluegrass style. Despite the fact that he’s the writer and he should know best, I didn’t really think that was an appropriate style for that song. At least not for me. So I was going to have to “put my own spin on it,” as they say on the TV singing-competition shows.
“My spin” turned out to be a finger-picked, very folksy, rather somber version, with some organ highlights. It matched the mood that the song evoked in me, and I was pretty pleased with the way it came out. More important, perhaps, was the fact that Joe told me more than once that he really liked it. And when a writer compliments you on how you handled their song — their baby — that means something.
The CD came out in 2014. I made a video that kind of carried on with the theme of the song, as well as drawing it specifically into the then-current world situation. The video got lots of views (one of my most-viewed videos on YouTube), and the song got lots of great comments. Over the years, the song has never gotten old for me. It is really well written, I really like my interpretation of it, and it has something important to say. And, unfortunately, it continues to be relevant. But despite all that, I never actually released my version of it except on Joe’s CD.
Until now.
I finally decided that, yes, I’d like this version of the song to reach a wider audience. So I took the original recordings, cleaned them up, tweaked the mix a little bit, and here it is. Available on all your favorite streaming platforms. Feel free to add it to your playlists and share it with all of your friends. It’s a song with a message, and I’m pleased to be able to be a part of it.
Because the old video was kind of dated, I also created a new video to go with the new version of the song. You can find it here.
Enjoy.