BP Blues: Songs about the Gulf oil spill

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger & BP
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 01:52 PM

Previous thread: "Pete Seeger - God's Counting on You (Lorre Wyatt)"

Subject: RE: Pete Seeger & BP
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 04:32 AM

Sorry, I forgot to say that the song is called 'God's Counting On Me'

Subject: Pete Seeger & BP
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 04 Sep 10 - 04:25 AM

Yup. Take a listen to Pete singing a brand new song about the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

He's already got me singing along.. :0)

Pete Seeger - "When 'Drill, baby, drill!" turns to 'Spill, baby, spill!".....

Hope you enjoy this video..

Subject: RE: BP Blues: Songs about the Gulf oil spill
From: reggie miles
Date: 20 Aug 10 - 12:48 AM

Here's a link to the recently completed video that features my song,

There's A Hole

Sam Nuttmann is the video guru who created the piece. He and his ace crew captured over an hour of footage of Artis and I playing and answering questions about our passion for performing on the street. Sam is creating a documentary about street performers.

Enjoy!

Subject: Lyr Add: OIL ON THE WATER (Bill Bonyun)
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Jul 10 - 09:03 AM

Here's another song on this topic composed by folk singer Bill Bonyun back in 1972 after an oil tanker ripped a gash in her bottom while navigating a passage into Portland Harbor, ME:

Words by Bill Bonyun © 1972
Tune traditional gospel Walk on the Water

Oil on the Water

On the stormy seas, the ship for to save,
They used to pour a little oil on the water;
To keep God's children from a watery grave,
They poured oil on the troubled water.

Chorus:

        Oil on the water,
        Oil on the water, children,
        Oil on the water,
        Pour oil on the troubled water.

But now great ships sail the seas so wide,
Carrying oil across the water;
300 thousand tons on the ocean tide,
Cry out danger to the water.

       Oil on the water,
        Oil on the water, children,
        Oil on the water,
        Oil's gonna trouble the water.

Remember well, back in '72,
The Tamano spilled oil on the water;
The night was black, the pilot took her through,
Striking Soldier's Ledge in the water.* (CHO)

100 thousand gallons spoiled Portland's shore,
Just a little oil on the water;
Santa Barbara's beaches are no more,
With a little more oil on the water. (CHO)

The wild Maine coast is a beautiful shore,
Standing on the cool clear water;
Full of jagged reefs, swift tides, fog and more,
Sank many ships on the water. (CHO)

When a tanker on a Maine reef breaks apart,
300 thousand tons on the water;
Good bye birds, fish, home of our hearts,
From Cape Cod to Eastport waters. (CHO)

* New verse by Charlie Ipcar, April, 1991

Portland, Maine, is still a major oil storage and pump station port and it's just a matter of time before another major accident happens. Our best trained crews and our state of the art responder ship have been in the Gulf for the last three months. I have wondered what would be done if a major accident happened here while they were helping clean up the Gulf.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BP Blues: Songs about the Gulf oil spill
From: reggie miles
Date: 30 Jul 10 - 02:40 AM

A video crew that's been collecting material for a documentary about street performers contacted me about offering some of my music for their project. I chose to offer them one of my latest. It's a song that I wrote about the Gulf spill.

I thought a long while about what I could offer in song about the Gulf spill. It's a sad story and that made it easy to develop as a blues song. I was inspired by a folk song that I used to hear from a favorite childhood TV entertainer of mine, a character from among those featured on Captain Kangaroo.

Hugh Brannum (Mr. Green Jeans) was a wonderful children's entertainer before he ever joined up with the Captain. He produced a series of children's story songs about a character called Little Orley and offered them to the world as, Uncle Lumpy. I've collected quite a few of Uncle Lumpy's Little Orley stories on 78 rpm records over the years. I've always wanted to offer them to entertain little ones. They are very sweet story songs.

It was one of Mr. Green Jean's songs, that he offered on the Captain Kangaroo show, "There's A Hole In the Bottom of the Sea", that inspired me to write my song, "There's A Hole In the Bottom of the Gulf". I altered the verses to reflect the Gulf story but kept the same structure of building one verse upon another, making each successive verse longer, as he did with his song. I altered his major key choice for his silly tongue twister folk song to a minor key and used my homemade resophonic "Nobro" to play it bottleneck slide style. It turned out to be a powerful bottleneck slide folk/blues with a strange kind of 6/8 latin beat.

Hey, don't ask me to explain how all of that just happened to have come together as it did. I don't argue with the muse. I just write and sing whatever the muse tells me to do.

The guys capturing the video told me that it'll be done in about a week. I told them that I've never heard a video crew utter those words before. Everything that's come my way seemed to take months to arrive.

However, I've seen their work and their production is top shelf. It's as good as anything that I've seen done anywhere. So, I'm very excited to see and hear the finished piece.

I understand that I'll be able to share the finished video of my song online as I see fit. I'm thrilled to have such a skilled crew offering their filming and editing talents in this project.

I wrote the verses out in one of the threads below talking about the spill but the words alone can't convey the song very well. So, I'll send a link to the video as soon as I receive it and post in online.

Subject: BP Blues
From: Arkie
Date: 28 Jul 10 - 04:16 PM

Wonder how many songs have been inspired by the Gulf oil spill. Here's one - BP Blues, written and sung by Drew Landry.   There are at least three songs by this same title.

Drew Landry

Subject: RE: Song about the Gulf oil spill
From: GUEST,Philippa
Date: 04 Jun 10 - 11:56 AM

any chance you could transcribe Winship's lyrics for Mudcat?

Subject: RE: Song about the Gulf oil spill
From: open mike
Date: 01 Jun 10 - 05:29 PM

yikes...this will pump out many songs, i fear....
(decided not to post to the thread below about the spill..
keeping this up here in the music section..
please add more if you got 'em)

gives a whole new meaning to gooey ducks...

Subject: Lyr Add: THE OIL SONG (Steve Forbert)
From: oldhippie
Date: 01 Jun 10 - 05:15 PM

There's this one by Steve Forbert, the last verse written about the Gulf.

THE OIL SONG
Steve Forbert
May 2010 update

"Oh, the engine's gone dead!" cried the men who were there
And she passed up the dock on the wide Delaware;
Then the ship ran aground and the oil got away
And they did not report the big spill on that day.
It was hundreds of thousands of gallons galore
Stretching thirty-two miles down the Delaware shore;
There were geese in the marshes out looking for food,
They got stuck where they stood in the oncoming crude!

And it's oil, oil,
Drifting to the sea;
An' it's oil, oil,
Don't buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

In the well-charted waters of the Nantucket shoals
Was a ship run aground, full of oil, we were told;
In a week's worth of rough winter weather and waves,
The boat started cracking and it could not be saved.
It was seven point six million gallons this time---
Consider the danger and think of the crime
As it poured out a slick stretching into the tide
Over one hundred miles, it came deep, it came wide!

It was oil! oil!
Pouring in the sea;
Oil, oil,
Don't buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

One of these ships was the Olympic Games;
The Argo Merchant was the other one's name.
It's sad but it's true, things got worse for the seas,
Along came a craft called Amoco Cadiz---
Amoco Cadiz between England and France,
Big supertanker out taking a chance
With his one hundred thousand black tons of the slime,
Amoco Cadiz spilt the most of all time!

People, oil! oil!
Creeping in the sea!
It was oil, oil,
Don't buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

Gallons of sludge, sixty million and more!
Sleazin' and easin'; towards many a shore;
A Mexican oil well went leaking its goo----
At that time the worst things had ever come to!

REPEAT CHORUS
It was oil, oil,
Creepin' in the sea;

Hey, the captain's now free and his case it is closed,
The Exxon Valdez wrecked itself I suppose;
What's left of the life in the Prince William Sound
Might not condone what our court of law found!

And it's oil! oil!
Creeping in the sea!
Oil, oil,
Don't buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

Saddam Hussein was a pretty strange man,
Look what he's done for his trusting homeland,
With sanctions and bombing he'd no way to sell
Crude from his captured Kuwaiti oil wells;
He sat down to think and came up with a scheme---
One that he thought might protect his regime;
Covered the Gulf in a blanket of black
Thought it might hold a few battleships back!

REPEAT CHORUS
It was oil, oil,
Creepin' in the sea,

Registered in through Liberian doors,
Passin' the Shetlands near Scotland's cold shores,
A single-hulled ship with his engine broke down
Drifted five hours and then ran aground
Right where the wildlife preserve chanced to be
And twenty million more gallons got free.
But don't worry, folks, "It's light crude!" they did say,
"It'll prob'ly break up and be gone right away!"

REPEAT CHORUS

They're banning those single-hulled tankers we hear,
Phasin' 'em out in the next sev'ral years;
There's one called The Prestige won't be junked in that heap,
It stalled off of Spain and it sank down the deep;
One million gallons of fuel reached the beach,
Nineteen more sank in some tanks that weren't breached;
If air's trapped inside 'em they'll burst any day,
If not, they'll just sit there to rust and decay…

Till it's oil! oil!
Creepin' in the sea...

The Delaware River was back in distress,
This time the captain did not cause the mess;
The paint on his ship was the same as the type
That divers found scraped on a fifteen-foot pipe;
Therefore the pipe was the cause of the hole,
The hole in his hull was beyond his control;
Hey, whoever knows how that pipe got stuck there---
Thanks for the half-million-gallon nightmare!

REPEAT CHORUS
Which was oil, oil,
Yeah, creepin' to the sea,
It was oil. It was oil...

The Israeli Army was bombing Beirut
Cause Hezbollah kidnapped some Israeli troops;
The Lebanese oil was in tanks near the sea
'Cause that's where those oil storage tanks tend to be;
The Israeli bombs hit the tanks on the shore,
The oil isn't stored in those tanks anymore;
The Mediterranean tourism buzz
As per The Holy Land ain't what it was!

REPEAT CHORUS
Now it's oil, an' it's oil,
Creepin' in the sea...

A barge full of oil hit a tanker last night,
The good news I guess is the tanker's alright;
The barge broke in two and so old New Orleans
Got stuck with what newscaster teams call a "sheen"
The riverfront walk was a-funk, yeah, with fumes,
The Coast Guard was rollin' out red plastic booms
To block off the spill and contain it … (good luck!)
Four hundred thousand thick gallons of muck!

REPEAT CHORUS
It was oil, oil,
Creepin' to the sea...

We're pumpin' out petrol, no matter what cost
And now that eleven men's lives have been lost
The price is as high as rig workers can pay—
Payin' the price for the U. S. of A.
A deepwater rig called Horizon went down,
No way to seal off its pipe has been found;
So south Louisianans all wait for to see
Just what the landfall of this spill will be. . .

People, oil, an' it's oil,
Creepin' in the sea,
Don't buy it at the station,
You can get it now for free,
Just come on down to the shoreline
Where the water used to be.

Subject: RE: Song about the Gulf oil spill
From: Leadfingers
Date: 01 Jun 10 - 01:28 PM

Good Stuff !

Subject: Song about the Gulf oil spill
From: open mike
Date: 01 Jun 10 - 01:01 PM

I just rec'd this song in my e-mail this morning. It is by Ben Winship who says: 'In response to the Gulf Oil Spill I was driven to write & record this the other day. Memphis Minnie's "What's the Matter with the Mill" was calling for a re-write. While I encourage you to share this, learn this and play this, mostly I just hope the song becomes obsolete..."