T-Time: Time Tested Tales Tall and True
Song descriptions & Links to Lyrics
- 1. Interstellar Cowboy is a science fiction western swing cowboy song containing, among other things, eight stars, one constellation, one stellar configuration, some Star Trek walk ons, a Texas beer company, a romance and a reference to a blue shift which, in spectral analysis, basically means something is coming toward you. LYRICS
- 2. Diamonds and Gold is a look at South Africa in the last days of apartheid. LYRICS
- 3. End of the Roll is an urban legend about a carpet layer in a house full of budgies on the wing. LYRICS
- 4. The Immaculate Conception is another urban legend that sounds like a tabloid headline: "Bullet passes through civil war soldier's scrotum and impregnates innocent bystander". LYRICS
- 5. The Groundhog's Day is either an anthopmorphic perspective on Feb.2 prognostication, or an autobiographical comment on procrastination. LYRICS
- 6. No News is an urban legend where "if things can get worse, they will", kind of cowboy poetry to music and also kind of like the Louvin Brothers meet Homer and Jethro. LYRICS
- 7. Rosa is another urban legend about a dog in a Hong Kong restaurant. The story had its first appearance in a newspaper in Zurich Switzerland in 1971. LYRICS
- 7. Mexican Pet is an urban legend that "actually happened to a friend of my sister in Victoria". LYRICS
- 8. Teen Angel (10 second intro only) is a song by Jean Surrey. It was one of a string of songs from the late 1950s and 1960s in which people, usually teenagers, tragically died. I included it here as a way of introducing the song which immediately follows this: "Interchange Two Phases".
- 9. Interchange Two Phases - Urban legend meets three phase electric motor theory and then mates with the "Teen Angel" genre of song popular in the early sixties. Lots of "ooh wah oohs". LYRICS
- 10. Ohm's Law is a television theme song for a science fiction western action drama, starring George Simon Ohm, the man who plowed a major furrow in the field of electical physics by formulating a relationship between amps, ohms and volts. LYRICS
- 11. Llewelyn and Gelert - This is a cautionary Welsh folk tale that really illustrates that, even in the 13th century, dogs were not considered an adequate substitutes for qualified child care workers. LYRICS
- 12. Time For the Sunset is inspired by the life of Elizabeth Cotton, writer of "Freight Train" which became a guitar finger picking standard during the folk music revival of the fifties and sixties. LYRICS
- 13. We All Live Here (round) is a short round (co-written with Susan Bond). LYRICS
- 14. A Bell is Only a Bell - a short anonymous poem provided the seed of inspiration into this small quest for the "meaning of life". LYRICS
- 15. Lament for the Prairie Giants pays tribute to the passing of the wooden prairie grain elevators on the Saskatchewan plains. LYRICS AND BACKGROUND
- 16. Prairie Pagans - A Saskatchewan crocus hunt ritual. An a-cappella duet with Paddy Tutty. LYRICS
- 17. The Spirit of Giving is a true family story about how the kids save Christmas. LYRICS AND BACKGROUND
