(a member of Slipped A Mickey plays a jug
mounted on a microphone stand)
It’s funny. Pat Donahue has been playing guitar on A Prairie Home Companion for over 13 years. He’s a world-class fingerstyle player, to my ears, and Chet Atkins and Leo Kottke (whose ears are better educated on the subject) agree. Playing for Garrison Keillor must be a bear, as you have to be ready to … you know, whatever … play in almost any genre, or play as if you were a freezing-cold drunken cowboy, or make your guitar sound like it was broken in half or …
Despite all this, my impression is that Donahue has not been especially well known in Minnesota. At least given the fine, difficult, consistent, high-profile labor he’s performed for us over a long time, it doesn’t seem we’ve ever really focused on the guy and appreciated him. Well, that’s been my sense anyway.
Until that sushi song. Back in 2000, Donahue played a song he’d written — a stupid song, really, but very funny — about getting sick from sushi. It was called “Sushi Yucki.” The response was kind of huge, and it seems to be raising his profile.
Tickets to an upcoming concert by Donahue were used this past Saturday to draw memberships during Minnesota Publc Radio’s pledge drive — and “Sushi Yucki” was aired in its entirety, as if to remind us who the guy is and how great it would be to see him perform. He’ll have no choice but to play “Sushi Yuki” at his concert:
They think it sounds so yummy
But, hey, I ain’t no dummy
I knew no way
It would stay
Down in my tummy
I took a bite
And I was right
No likee icky yucky sushi
A moral of the story, of course, is you never know what’s going to draw an audience.
Now, the 25th Annual Battle of the Jug Bands was on Sunday (the day after I last heard “Sushi Yucki” on the radio). One of the contestants was a band called Slipped a Mickey, which I enjoyed very much even if they just couldn’t compete with the winners, The Hump Night Thumpers — THE FIGHTIN’ THUMPERS!
Slipped a Mickey played John Prine’s novelty song “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian” as a kind raunchy, down-tempo, coffeehouse blues. Having heard the two songs so close together, I finally recognized their affinity.
Like “Sushi Yucki,” you want to listen to “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian” over and over until you feel like … well, like you’ve had too much sushi. Both songs begin in my stomping grounds, the Upper Midwest, and then travel to the islands of the Pacific, where the narrator’s bodily functions dominate the action:
I am from Minnesota
I went to Tokyo-ta
Visit the land
Of enchantment and quaint pagoda
I almost died
The night they tried
To make me eat that yucky sushi.—
Well, I packed my bags and bought myself a ticket
For the land of the tall palm tree
Aloha Old Milwaukee, Hello Waikiki
I just stepped down from the airplane
When I heard her say
Waka waka nuka licka, waka waka nuka licka
Would you like a lei? Hey!
Both songs could be seen as racist, of course, depending as they do on faux-foreign gibberish. But like a lot of parody that traverses sensitive terrain, the songs are careful not to over-clarify the object of parody. Are we laughing at how funny the Japanese and Hawaiian languages sound? Or at Minnesotans — unable, as we are, to keep anything down but tuna casserole? Or at the jejune mating habits of Wisconsinites?
When I saw Prine last year in Minneapolis, he made a rather deliberate show of trudging resignedly through “Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian,” as if he had to do it whether he liked it or not. Three-quarters of the way through this surprisingly lengthy song, he vamped for a few seconds and warned us, “There’s more.”
Editor’s Note: I try to write these a day ahead, but given Valentine’s Day, I might be a little late with the February 15 post. Do I piss off my wife or the readers of my blog? Gentle reader, you just might lose that coin toss.
Anyway, this is the 14th installment of my 28-day attempt to post something every day in February. So, this entry is like Frank Cloutier and the Victoria Cafe Orchestra’s “Moonshiner’s Dance” — the mid-way point is marked by the silence immediately following. Be seated!
Pat is a helluva musician and a great songwriter. It’s a mystery to me why he isn’t more well known here in MN. He wrote a moving song called “Touch ‘Em All” for Kirby Puckett when he retired from baseball. Last year when Kirby died, Pat gave me permission to sing it at a gig. It was tough to get through.