Here’s a fairly comprehensive list of songs that constitute the well that we draw from. The songwriters are credited, if you’re curious about that. And there are a few annotations.
If you’re coming to a gig and you see a song here that you’d like us to play, why not scoot over to our “contact” page and send us a request. We’ll do our best to put it on our set list!
- 7 Down 15 Across (Greg Denton)
- A Little Extra Love (Richard Laviolette)
- All Around The World (Pixies rewrite of the traditional “Hang me, oh Hang Me” song)
- All Lost In The Supermarket (Strummer/Jones)
- Bad Boy (Antonia/Stampfel)
- Beautiful Blue Eyes (originally “Brown” eyes, by Alton Delmore)
- Before I Met You (Rader/Seitz, 1st recorded by Joe Cannonball Lewis, 1953)
- Benson, Arizona (Bill Taylor/John Carpenter, a country & western sci-fi song about faster-than-light space travel recorded by John Yager for John Carpenter’s 1st movie, “Dark Star – A Spaced Out Odyssey”, 1974)
- Beyond Here Lies Nothing (Bob Dylan)
- Break Down These Blues (Richard Laviolette)
- Bride of the Wind (Greg Denton)
- Buffalo Gal (Greg Denton)
- Cold Cold Heart (Hank Williams, melody adapted from T. Texas Tyler’s 1945 recording of the Ted West song “You’ll Still Be In My Heart”, 1943)
- Cold Hard Facts Of Life (Bill Anderson, 1st recorded by Porter Wagoner in 1966)
- Coming To The End of the Street (Greg Denton)
- Cowtown (Greg Denton) – a hoedowned re-conceptualization of the E.E. Cummings poem ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’ with a dash of 70s T.V. nostalgia thrown in too.
- Crazy Feeling (Lou Reed)
- Dark End of the Street (Penn/Moman, 1st recorded by James Carr in 1967)
- Don’t Let The Sunshine Fool Ya (Guy Clark)
- Drivin’ Nails In My Coffin (Jerry Irby, 1st recorded by Jerry Irby and His Texas Cowboys in 1945, and by Ernest Tubb in 1946)
- Euphoria (Robin Remailly, Holy Modal Rounders)
- Every One’s In Love With You (Steve Earle)
- Everything Is Broken (Bob Dylan)
- Fiddler A Dram (trad.)
- Fine Artiste Blues (Robert Crumb)
- Fistful of Rain (Warren Zevon)
- Flop Eared Mule (trad.)
- Freight Train (Elizabeth Cotten)
- Genius (Warren Zevon)
- Gonna Give Myself a Party (Don Gibson)
- Gospel Truth (Greg Denton)
- Griselda (Antonia/Stampfel)
- Ground Hog (trad.)
- Happy Boy (Conover/Becker, The Beat Farmers)
- Heart Disease Called Love (John Cooper Clarke)
- Hearts of Stone (Bruce Springsteen, the title track from the Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes album known as “the best album Bruce Springsteen never recorded”, 1978)
- How I Got To Memphis (Tom T. Hall)
- I Know It’s True But I’m Sorry To Say (Gordan Gano, Violent Femmes)
- I Wanna Be Sedated (The Ramones)
- I Was Taken (Greg Denton)
- I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight (Bob Dylan)
- I’ll Be Your Mirror (Lou Reed)
- I’ll Break Out Again Tonight (Owens/Shaffer, recorded by Merle Haggard, 1974)
- I’ll Sing Tonight (Meredith Blackmore)
- In My Hour of Darkness (Emmylou Harris & Gram Parsons)
- In The Morning (Meredith Blackmore)
- In The Neighborhood (Tom Waits)
- It’s Too Late (The Jim Carroll Band song, definitely not Carole King)
- Leaving of Liverpool (Traditional)
- Leaving The Table (Leonard Cohen)
- Let the Lower Light Keep Burning (Philip Bass, 1871)
- Light My Fire (The Doors)
- Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake (Albert Price)
- Log Driver’s Waltz (Wade Hemsworth)
- Mary Tyler Moore aka Love Is All Around (Sonny Curtis, the Probable Cause version ends with a wee mash-up with Weezer’s Buddy Holly)
- Me, Myself, and I (Gordon/Roberts/Kauffman, 1st recorded by Billie Holiday in 1937)
- Must You Throw Dirt In My Face (Bill Anderson, 1st recorded by The Louvin Brothers in 1962)f
- My Grandma’s More Punk (Richard Laviolette)
- No-One’s In The Kitchen (Greg Denton)
- Old Plank Road (trad., recorded by Uncle Dave Macon in 1926)
- Peggy Leg (Terry Allen)
- Philadelphia Lawyer (Woody Guthrie)
- Pistol Packin’ Mama (Al Dexter)
- Porcelain Monkey (Warren Zevon – a song about Elvis Presley based on a postcard which pictured a porcelain statue of a monkey sitting on the coffee table in the T.V. room at Graceland)
- Railroad Bill (trad., According to Alan Lomax, “Railroad Bill” was an African-American turpentine worker from Alabama, whose real name was Morris Slater. The terrible conditions in which turpentine workers lived drove him to a life of crime; typically, he would break into railroad cars and steal the goods. Slater’s life has become legend in this song.)
- Railroad Worksong (trad. this is based on the adaptation by Mark Knopfler’s band The Notting Hillbillies)
- Rain Comin’ Down (Greg Denton)
- Random Canyon (Peter Stampfel, Steve Weber, Antonia, The Holy Modal Rounders)
- Real Live Fool (Lee Hazelwood)
- Rock and Roll (Lou Reed)
- Run Mountain (trad.? or J.E.Mainer?)
- Saginaw, Michigan (Bill Anderson/Don Wayne, recorded by Lefty Frizzell in 1963)
- Same Old Man (trad. also known as Old Man of the Mill)
- Sherry Darling (Bruce Springsteen)
- Snowin’ On Raton (Townes Van Zandt)
- Spirited (Greg Denton)
- Sugar Tooth (Greg Denton)
- Sunday Morning (Lou Reed)
- Supine Diamond (Greg Denton)
- Sweet William (trad.)
- Take Time To Know Her (Steve Davis, recorded by Percy Sledge in 1968)
- Things Have Changed (Bob Dylan)
- Three-Way (Tom Heinl)
- To Live Is To Fly (Townes Van Zandt)
- To Make A Long Story Short (Greg Denton)
- Trash (David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain)
- Underdressed (Greg Denton)
- Vicious (Lou Reed)
- Volunteer (Warren Zevon)
- Voodoo Queens (Greg Denton)
- When She Comes (Greg Denton) – an apocalyptic rewrite of Comin’ Round The Mountain with references to Bob Dylan’s Highway 61, Leonard Cohen’s The Future, CCR’s Bad Moon Rising, and Geoff Berner’s Higher Ground.
- Whisky Willy (Michael Hurley)
- Who Loves The Sun (Lou Reed)
- Who’s Gonna Shoe (trad.)
- Window (Greg Denton)
- Winterlude (Bob Dylan)
- Your Tears Are Just Interest On The Loan (Don Reno)
- You’re Just A Wave (Butch Hancock)
- You’ve Got the Right String, Baby, But The Wrong Yo-Yo (Piano Red, 1st recorded by Douglas Finell and His Royal Stompers in 1929)
- Young Creeper (Greg Denton)
Probable Cause 