Ah Ahimsa

Ah Ahimsa
words and music by Lloyd Miller (c) (p) 2011
arrangement by Ari Dolegowski, Chris Johnson, Ely Levin, and Lloyd Miller

CHORUS
Ah... ahimsa
Shake out your limbsa
Drift to the ground, yeah
Make a lotus flower, yeah
Mahatma Gandhi
He's the one who told me
He fought the British Army
Without a gun

ULYSSES
I say "ahimsa" and I mean "do no harm"

BOOKER
"himsa" - harm in Sanskrit
"a" - "no" or  "non"

ULYSSES
I read about nonviolence and I'm like yeah that's my philosophy
But as soon as I leave the house I feel differently
Why can't people be nice to me?

BOOKER
Have you wanted to punch somebody... But then walked away? That's ahimsa... Sort of.

Gandhi's idea of ahimsa was that you didn't even think about punching the person in the first place...

ULYSSES
Ahimsa, it's easy, man
When you read what the Swamis said
But not so easy when someone hits you on the head
I'm all about ahimsa when I'm standing on my head...
But not so much when I see a kid push my kid
I'm like, yo, is anyone else practicing ahimsa around here?

How did you do it, I'd like to know
When the cops came out with the riot hose?

How did you do it, I'd like to know
When they whipped out the clubs and started whacking you?

Ahimsa... I know what you're going through
Ahimsa... It's hard to do
Ahimsa


I wrote a first draft of this song while working at a wild school in the South Bronx. I was working with four fourth grades, each studying a different country. The class studying India had an especially difficult time practicing nonviolence. Kids punched, pinned, choked, and generally battered each other just as a matter of course, the classroom teacher unable to stop them and I, armed with my guitar and my jokes, only able to distract them from their brawls. One day, in an attempt to rein in this one kid who was always throwing himself on the floor to do push-ups or roll around, I suggested that we do some yoga. The kids loved it and it became immediately the only thing they ever wanted to do. I decided to work it into our songwriting activities and in the performance of our song itself.

"Ah Ahimsa," in its original form ("Do the Ahimsa") began with a sun salutation and then each line was accompanied by a different yoga move (or pseudo yoga move). Honestly, it was the only way I could get the class through the whole song without someone being injured.

I always liked the idea of the song but the music not so much. It was a standard 12-bar blues that I wrote on the spot as I stood in front of a chaotic classroom searching for something that would quickly get them singing along. When I began to consider reviving the tune for this new album I rewrote the melody over some more interesting -- and Bollywoodish -- chords, added a B section, and changed the point of view of the song to my own. The spirit of the kids is still there, though. Nonviolence is a great idea but a hard thing to put into practice, especially when no one around you is practicing ahimsa.


Who does what on "Ah-Ahimsa"
Booker Dee (Chris Johnson): keyboards, vocals
Moby Dee (Ari Dolegowski): electric guitar, vocals
Otto von Dee (Ely Levin): drums, professional Bollywood drum machine, vocals
Ulysses S. Dee (Lloyd Miller): electric bass, lead vocals
Dean Jones: recording, mixing, vocals

Track listing for the new record

These titles aren't all final. We're just posting them to help you if you're participating in our Facebook poll to name the record.

Sacagawea (Sock It to 'Em)
we reach for Queen levels of rock pomposity on this tune sung from the POV of William Clark

River of Blood
a song about the circulatory system

Marie Curie
featuring Moby Dee's first singing on record -- in French!

Sojourner Truth
written for a show about the history of the Northampton area

Dead Horse Bay
written for our "Underwater Halloween" show, a collaboration with Underwater New York. http://underwaternewyork.com/category/body-of-water/dead-horse-bay-body-of-water/

Bluebird > Redbird, Redbird > Reef
a ballad for the subway cars that originally took passengers to the World's Fair then were painted graffiti-proof red, then were eventually sunk to become reefs

Cool Papa Bell
about the Negro League star

A Song for Abigail Adams
a love song sung by an idealized John Adams

Skating in Old Bryant Park
What if the statue of William Cullen Bryant behind the New York Public Library got up and started ice skating?

Birds of America Don't Care-Oh
Audubon's birds talk back. They don't like those paintings as much as everyone else does.

Whaleship Essex
The tale that inspired Moby Dick retold with a fake PBS narrator, rapping, singing sailor ghosts and other weirdness.

Camperdown Elm
an ode to my favorite Brooklyn tree

Ah-Ahimsa
Ahimsa, the philosophy of non-violence practice by Gandhi, is harder to put into practice than you think. I wrote an original draft of this Bollywood send-up while working with a wild class in the South Bronx studying India.

Henry (Hudson), How Ya Gonna Find a Way?
original draft written for a school show in Westchester. They were doing a Hudson 400 curriculum.

Penny Farthing
about those dangerous cousins to bicycles with one giant wheel and one tiny one.

Bo Obama
a story song about allergies, hypo-allergenic dogs, and one dog's rise to the White House

Phineas Gage
A hip hop account of the famous neurological case

The Day I Ran into Mayor LaGuardia's Belly
Esther, grandma of Moby Dee (Ari Dolegowski) tells one of her famous stories over a swinging tune written by Chris (Booker Dee)

The Golem
A marching / dancing tune about the mythical creature / superhero made of mud.

Family project: Little House

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, we had to read one of the Little House books for school. I can't remember which one. I dutifully plowed through it but considered it a horrible waste of my time. I had biographies of baseball and football legends, eyewitness accounts of WWII battles and other important boy books to read and was greatly annoyed that I was required to use valuable reading time on a book about girls. The only part of the book I can even vaguely remember was an account of a Indian encounter that hinted at being violent but disappointingly ended with little or no bloodshed.

Now, father of a 5-year-old-year daughter, I find myself re-visiting the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder. My wife started reading Little House in the Big Woods on a long family car ride last week and suddenly, after nearly falling asleep as she read the shockingly bad first volume of the Ivy + Bean series(chosen by my daughter at the bookstore), I found myself listening intently to descriptions of pig butchering, maple candy making, and rifle cleaning. How did I miss all this wonderful minutiae when I was a kid? I've now joined the reading tag team as we -- at my daughter's request -- set out to read the entire series. At night Little House by flashlight is the one thing that will entice my kids away from the still-light outdoors to their beds...

Want to join our Little House project? In addition to reading all the books we're also -- dork that I am -- studying up on the clothes they wore, the tools they used, and, most importantly for me, the music they loved. My 3-year-old son is now obsessed with "Arkansas Traveler," one of the tunes Laura's father plays on his fiddle. This morning we watched three different versions on YouTube. Please feel free to post on the Deedle Deedle Dees Facebook wall any suggestions you have for enriching a family reading project like this. Or just let us know you're reading too!



L

Set list for International Festival of Arts & Ideas, New Haven CT 6/19/11

Below is our set list from the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, CT, yesterday.

Special thanks to:
- The great festival staff and sound crew. Not just friendly, these folks went out of their way constantly to make sure we had a good show and a comfortable festival experience. Bravo!

- Tim H. Thanks for lending us your beautiful guitar!

- The Ebony Hillbillies -- We got to open up for this wonderful string band. The grown-up version of the Dees used to play swing and klezmer at the same venue as the Hillbillies: Stan's, a New Orleans-style restaurant in Brooklyn that sadly closed down. We never got to see the EHs there (our shows were always on different nights) but it was awesome to finally hear them last night. They killed it! http://www.ebonyhillbillies.com/

As always, if you have questions about any of these songs, write me at thedeedledeedledees AT yahoo DOT com.

1. Sojourner Truth
2. Little Red Airplane
3. Nellie Bly
4. The Golem
5. Dead Horse Bay
6. Baldy
7. A Song for Abigail Adams
8. Henry, How Ya Gonna Find a Way? (a tune about Henry Hudson)
9. Henry Box Brown
10. Skating in Old Bryant Park
11. Cool Papa Bell
12. ¡Sí Se Puede!
13. Tub-Tub-Ma-Ma-Ga-Ga

Read more about the festival here: http://www.artidea.org/event.php?id=402

L

The Melancholy Dane or Why I Finally Made a Nice-Sounding Album of Classroom Songs

Hamlet: The Album is now for sale on my Bandcamp page: lloydmiller.bandcamp.com. The album collects all the original songs I wrote with my wife's second-grade class for a musical version of Hamlet. The kids learned and performed the actual Shakespearean dialogue -- my wife edited the script down to about 30 pages so that the show would run under a hour and tell the basic story but also give her students an opportunity to wrestle with those wonderful original words. I worked with her and the kids to figure out which moments best lent themselves to song and then wrote brand-new tunes with lyrics that are a mixture of what the kids wrote for homework, my additions and polishes, and Shakespeare's own words.

It's the first real cast album I've made with a school class even though I've been writing musicals like this one for years. Every year my wife and I create a brand-new show, usually based on a work of children's or classic literature. I've also gone into public schools in NYC, Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island, Massachusetts, and Arkansas to write songs based on what kids are studying. All in all I've written over 200 songs with kids in schools.

Every time I do a new show, parents, teachers, kids -- and other people I've told about the project -- ask me "When is the album coming out?" I usually dodge this question by saying that we might make an album, we might not, it will depend on how much time the teachers can devote in class, etc etc BS BS...

No matter how many times I deliver this lengthy evasion I still believe it on some level-- I still think I might get around to making a real album.

But of course I never have. I have made some home recordings featuring me performing the songs as well as some GarageBand-quality "albums" with the kids singing and me playing some simple accompaniment. But why haven't I ever tried to make something people would actually enjoy playing again and again? (When I say "people" I mean people who are not parents of children in the class and therefore willing to put up with low quality recordings simply because their child is on them).

It's not because I haven't believed in the songs. Although there are certainly songs that were written for a very specific narrative purpose and wouldn't make sense to someone not watching a live performance of a particular play, most of the tunes I've written for these shows are poppy (poppier than the Dees), easy to sing along with (more so than much of the Dees catalog), super catchy, and often tied into movements. They're very much tunes that someone could enjoy whether or not they were familiar with the story that inspired them.

But as someone without a home studio or the skills to make my own recordings that sound professional (I'm a songwriter and performer but definitely not an engineer, mixer, or producer) I have hesitated to spend money on recordings that are unlikely to make that money back. I've written a lot of good songs over the years but people will only buy so much music -- and if I tried to sell an album, for example, called The Silk That Got Away (the title of last year's absolutely wonderful Silk Road musical) many people would be baffled and ask me things like "Is this for children?" "The Silk Road? Why?" "Does this have that honk-honk song on it?" (They ask these things about every Dees record also)

So I've let these songs disappear and exist mainly in my mind and the minds of the kids who wrote and performed these shows (I still have high schoolers coming up to me wanting to tell me that they were just recently singing some song I wrote with them years ago).

It's pained me. I used to go to a therapist (hasn't everyone in New York?) and I used to tell him about this -- how I felt like I nearly killed myself a few times a year writing and leading these shows only to have them mostly forgotten. He said that I was frustrated because I was "spinning my wheels" (his expression) with these shows, putting in a lot of time and creative energy but not seeing any concrete professional or financial rewards as a result. I protested that these shows have offered many rewards of a more difficult-to-measure variety: the satisfaction of seeing kids who struggle in the classroom come to life as they work on a musical project, the thrill of writing and performing a complete story-in-song for an attentive audience... but my therapist, pragmatist that he was, acknowledged these rewards as valid but immediately resumed pushing me to figure out a way to make my schoolwork pay off. He couldn't be dissuaded from the idea that my school musicals and the process of making them could both be commodities that I could sell for a good profit. I agreed, half-heartedly, to investigate the possibility.

Hamlet: The Album is an attempt to make good on what I told my therapist. The songs we wrote for this show are terrific, but there have been many terrific tunes in the many shows I've co-composed. All that's really different with Hamlet is that I'm trying -- for the first time -- to present one of my school shows to the public in a truly palatable way. We recorded these songs quickly -- all the basic rhythm tracks in one day, nearly all the kid vocals one afternoon, all the overdubbing another day -- but we did most of the work in a real studio, the studio where we're recording the new Dees record. Dean Jones, who's producing that album, recorded us, added a bunch of new, bad-ass guitar parts, and mixed the tracks. We didn't have the album really mastered -- Dean just EQ'd the tracks then put them through a nice limiter -- but I do feel like we've presented these songs the best way we possibly could. Obviously I'm super biased but I think the album sounds really great -- and I really want everyone to hear it. I especially want parents, teachers, and other people connected with schools to hear it so they understand what can happen when I go into a school and am given enough time and resources -- so please pass it on to as many of these folks as you can. Despite the involvement of my bandmates and Dean it's still very much a kid album and we tried to leave enough of their quirks and jerks and weird notes and cryptic lyrics in there so that it would sound like it, like something that was created by actual kids in an actual school.Teachers and parents: your real kids in your real school can do make something just as impressive.

So I don't feel too bad about finally using one of my school projects to promote myself publicly -- and so no kids sue me for stealing their ideas -- I'm giving all the proceeds after expenses to earthquake relief in Japan. I do want to help Japan but I also feel like these songs don't belong to me. They're very much the product of our collaboration and even the ones that I played the biggest role in writing wouldn't have been written outside the unique creative environment that a classroom provides. I also don't want this album to be a vanity project in any way -- for me or the kids. I want all our hard creative work to fuel good works elsewhere.

So download the Hamlet album! We've got to pay this thing off. And once we do, we can start making some money for Japan. That would be cool, wouldn't it?

Still spinning my wheels but now hopefully in the right direction...
L

Mini-tour wrap-up

Booker Dee (Chris Johnson) and I returned from a two-week trip late last Friday night. We played public shows in Kentucky, Georgia, and Florida, and visited friends, school audiences, and a radio show along the way, stopping also in Tennessee and West Virginia.

We made this jaunt primarily to play two public shows at the Glazer Children's Museum in Tampa, FL on May 14th. I grew up in the Tampa area but I've never brought the whole band there so I was very excited -- and nervous. Otto von Dee (Ely Levin) and Moby Dee (Ari Dolegowski) were unable to make the two-week trip but flew down special to play these shows.

By anyone's estimation, the shows went well. We had good-sized crowds of kids and parents, most of whom had never seen us before. They got up and down and did all the interactive nonsense that's part of every DDDs show and many many people stayed after to ask us questions, catch up, have us sign stuff, etc. I got to see old friends and was proud to show off our wonderful band. Ultimately, though, these concerts were just two more shows out of the hundred or more I play every year. It wasn't until the next day, Sunday before last, that I really felt that unique thrill that professional live performers like us only get every once and while.

We played as part of the service at Thonotosassa United Methodist Church, a church where my stepfather Dennis is the pastor. Booker Dee / Chris, as you might know, has a day job as a church choir director and has asked the Dees and other musicians we play with regularly to join him on occasion to flesh out the tunes during the services he music directs in Jersey City so it made sense for us to stop by and help Dennis out. To be honest, though, we didn't really think of this church stop as one of the official Gigs (intentional capital "g") of the tour, just a fun, nice thing to do while we happened to be in Thonotosassa (a ruralish suburb of Tampa near the University of South Florida).

As it turned out, this gig / not gig was by far the most meaningful stop on the tour for me. Not for any religious reasons. Although I like church as a place to go, I'm unsure about what I believe and... I don't want to go into that right now. What made this such a powerful event was the unique enthusiasm of the congregation, a mostly elderly group that stood up to dance with us on "Tub-Tub-Ma-Ma-Ga-Ga;" sang "He's Got the Whole World," "Great is Thy Faithfulness," and other hymns loud enough to drown out the band; and gave a standing ovation to "Shalom Aleichem," an old sacred Jewish tune that Moby / Ari led. I should mention that Ari is the driving force of one of the grown-up incarnations of the Dees, a band specializing in klezmer and swing primarily for synagogue and other Jewish audiences. We wanted to make sure to share who we truly were with this small church: four friends from different religious and cultural backgrounds who have somehow figured out how to create lots of great music together for years.

This trip made me question whether we should even bother playing for the general public anymore. I'm being dramatic -- I'm not saying we're going to stop doing public shows. But on this trip it was the school audiences (in Lexington, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Atlanta) and that one church group that really made me feel like I was doing something worthwhile. I came back resolved once again to figure out a way to bring our music to new audiences, audiences who we we'll never reach via expensive public concerts, television shows, parenting websites, magazines or any of the other outlets that I spend so much of my time (mostly unsuccessfully) pursuing. Ever since I formed the Dees, I've wanted to be a service-based band, one that not only shares our music as widely as possible but also gives voices to people who aren't usually heard. How to do that better I don't know. Ideas?

Blah blah blah

Lloyd (Ulysses S. Dee)

Our mini-tour: (almost) complete itinerary

The Deedle Deedle Dees are hitting the road next week for a mini-tour. I say "mini" because most of the shows we're playing are going to be smaller-scale two-man gigs featuring me and Booker Dee (Chris Johnson). In addition, we're not going to be doing the relentless schedule of gigs we usually do on these trips (18-25 gigs in two weeks...). Instead, we'll be spending much of the trip rehearsing -- and writing -- tunes for the new album we're going to start tracking with Dean Jones on Memorial Day weekend. We'll also be playing several two-man shows -- a handful that are open to the general public, but most of them at schools, day care centers, retirement homes, churches, synagogues, and other spots that have asked us to come.

We'll send videos from most of our stops featuring new tunes, tunes we're working on, and songs we just feel like singing in a particular place. As always, check our YouTube www.youtube.com/user/singalongwithlloyd for the latest.

There will be at least two full-band shows on this trip and these are going to happen in Tampa, FL (my hometown) at the Glazer Children's Museum. Dees Otto von and Moby (Ely Levin and Ari Dolegowski) are flying down special for these. I've never brought the whole band to the place where I spent the first 18 years of my life -- I can't wait.

Here are all our appearances that are open to the public. When we list a city without a venue it's because we'll be there for school shows or other stuff that's not open to the public (radio tapings, etc). But if you see that we're playing in your town or near it -- and you'd like us to play at your kid's school or another venue, send me an e-mail and maybe we can make it happen. My e-mail is thedeedledeedledees AT yahoo DOT com.

Tuesday, May 10
Lexington, KY - Lexington Public Library
Two-man performances by Ulysses S. Dee and Booker Dee
Two shows: 9am, 10am
FREE
www.lexpublib.org

Wednesday, May 11
Knoxville, TN

Friday, May 13
Tampa, FL

Saturday, May 14
Tampa, FL - Glazer Children's Museum
Two FULL BAND shows: 11:45am, 3pm
Free with museum admission
www.glazermuseum.org

Sunday, May 15
Thonotosassa, FL

Monday, May 16
Jacksonville, FL

Tuesday, May 17
Atlanta, GA - Imagine It! The Children's Museum of Atlanta
A two-man performance by Ulysses S. Dee and Booker Dee
12noon
Free with museum admission
http://www.childrensmuseumatlanta.org/

Wednesday, May 18
Chattanooga, TN / Athens, GA

Thursday, May 19
Decatur, GA - Little Shop of Stories
7pm
FREE
http://www.littleshopofstories.com/

Saturday, May 21
Virginia / Maryland

see you soon!

Lloyd (Ulysses S. Dee)