I like songs that give me room for dramatic and philosophical interpretation in my singing: "Abilene," in addition to having a beautiful melody and a theme of homesickness and urban alienation seems also to me to be about lost childhood, lost innocence. I add a couple of my own verses which make this more explicit.

An old country chestnut, "The Green, Green Grass of Home" I can milk a lot of emotion from: it starts out aparently with the same theme as "Abilene," but the last verse shows us it's not just nostalgia: the character awakes from his dream of home and love to the reality of his impending execution: The last time I sang it for my Once Born friends even a couple of the men were wiping tears from their eyes.

I'm working on adding "Aragon Mill" to my repertoire because of its relevance to one of my political concerns, the decline of American industry, the shipping of jobs overseas, the corporate abandonment of the source of their wealth, the workers who built the industries. The song, like "Abilene," is too short for my taste, so I'm adding a couple or three verses (which I'll post if they're any good).

I also like these songs because, even with my limited ability, I can play decent breaks on them with both banjo and harmonica.

--seed