I thought I'd waded into this topic in the past, probably on a different thread with a similar name. And pardon me if this was already mentioned, I skimmed, didn't read this thread today.

There is a ritual at the Seattle Song Circle when someone passed away to do a gathering and pot luck and one of the events was to ritually rip apart and shred or burn a copy of Rise Up Singing. They did so with particular gusto when my father died because he really disliked seeing the top of someone's head as they fumbled through reading the words to sing a song that they didn't know well enough to be performing in public.

He practiced a lot - learning the chords on the guitar and the words, usually the chords came first, and while he was doing that and singing from a page at home we kids learned the words since that was the only part we were participating in. He would come to our rooms at night and sing a couple of requests and sing a couple of songs he was learning - and if he stumbled on the words we could supply them because we now knew the words to the song.

By the time he was out at an event or hoot or song circle performing a song he'd been working on it for weeks, at the very least, so it could be sung properly.

Maggie Dwyer, daughter of John Dwyer