Bleg: Help me build the Mon Tiki Songbook
Two years ago, as we were coming down the homestretch to get Mon Tiki in the water, I vowed that I would take the first $800 in gross receipts and put it towards a 12-string guitar. But being the cheapskate that I am, this did not come to pass.
What has happened is that there are now on board Mon Tiki three ukeleles (1 tenor, 2 soprano), a borrowed 6-string guitar, and a bag full of latin hand percussion. (More cowbell!)
When the mood is right, the instruments come out and we jam. I show people how to make an open and closed sound on the triangle, or how to beat out quarter notes on the claves, and off we go. (If you can get the triangle working eight-notes and the claves and or cowbell working quarter-notes, then anything anyone else does more or less fits.)
It’s great. Mon Tiki scooning through the harbor with music pouring overboard. I love it, our guests love it, passing boats love it.
As a project for this winter, I would like to expand my uke/guitar repertoire to include sing-alongs; songs like “Southern Cross” or “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, and I am asking OG readers and writers to make suggestions in the comments below.
Thanks in advance!
In my experience with campfire singing, Tom Petty is a go-to guy for good sing-along songs that don’t require more than 4 chords. American Girl and Free Fallin’ are a couple of songs that pretty much everybody will have down after the first verse.
Fogerty is an example of a guy who wrote one song, but… damn. It was a corker. If you can play one, you can probably wander through another. Proud Mary, Lookin Out My Back Door, Down on the Corner (the lyric is “tap your feet” and not “happy feet”, sadly).
I’m pretty sure that Dylan has a bunch of three-chord songs. “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” is a good one for sunset…
But if I had a piece of advice, find a guy who has Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant memorized. Give him a guitar and 20 minutes. The grownups will not have heard that song since the 90’s, the kids will never have heard it before. And everybody loves when we come back home to “You Can Get Anything You Want At Alice’s Restaurant”.Report
And a Tom Petty song is guaranteed singable by someone with no voice.Report
“Cats in the Cradle.” Take an hour or so to learn to pluck out the guitar solo bit, and after that it’s like four chords and it makes the couples get all cozy, and the fathers get all
buggyhuggy with their sons.ReportYou have to be cruel to be kind. Brilliant suggestion, Burt.Report
A couple off the top of my head:
Blackbird, The Beatles
I’ve Just Seen a Face, The Beatles (this is a fun one with a group).
Can’t Find My Way Home, Blind Faith
For a single guitar, you can’t beat Lenny (Stevie Ray Vaughan).
I love the suggestion of Alice’s Restaurant…Report
How about “The Downeaster Alexa”? 😉Report
SolidReport
I guess “Edmund Fitzgerald” is right out.Report
SundownReport
Oh, and I kick myself for forgetting: There’s a dude called “John Denver” who has a decent songbook. I don’t know how well “Colorado Rocky Mountain High” would play on the open water (for what it’s worth, it does well around a campfire which is what I’m using as my baseline for what would make a good song) but he’s also got Take Me Home Country Roads, Annie’s Song, Leaving on a Jet Plane…
You could also open with something like “Sunshine on my shoulder… AUGH THAT’S AN ENGINE FIRE AUGH” and then when everybody gets really quiet go “too soon?”
Oh, there’s also James Taylor. You’ve Got A Friend and Fire and Rain should work well in the twilight.Report
Redemption Song
You can get it if you really want
No Woman, No Cry
Shower the People
Beans in My Ears (particularly if there are kids)
Puff the Magic Dragon
You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd
This Land is Your Land
Ukelele LadyReport