Love Is Like

 by Rob Kneisler

Rob describes listening to the Coffeehouse station on satellite radio, and hearing someone sing that "love is like a diamond..." But is it? Really? He set out to write a song about all the things love is like.

Love is like my old first car

It's blue sometimes and sticks in second gear

Love is like a tangerine

It's firm to slightly soft and it's heavy for its size

Love is like a used dishwasher that comes with an apartment

Where they only ask for first month's rent and there's no cleaning fee

Yeah, I know love

I know love

Love is like a John Wayne movie

But not the one you're thinking of

Love is like a baby's smile

– wait, no it's not, I take that back

Love is like a silent chord played on an old piano

By a Latvian trombonist on her quest to make it big

Yeah, I know love

I know love

Love is like a burning oven mitt

A gift from your first cousin

That never even fit

Yes, that's it

Love is like a tennis ball

I'm not sure why, it's just the way it is

Love is like an angry sea in a Bob Ross painting

According to my dad

Love is like an operation suddenly gone bad

Where the patient might not make it

And they're someone who you've hated

So it's kind of complicated and you're not sure what to think

Yeah, I know love

I know love

I know love

I know love

The Book of Love

 by Stephin Merritt

Love is ridiculous, yet we love.

The book of love is long and boring

No one can lift the damn thing

It's full of charts and facts and figures

And instructions for dancing

But I

I love it when you read to me

And you

You can read me anything

The book of love has music in it

In fact that's where music comes from

And some of it is just transcendent

Some of it is just really dumb

But I

I love it when you sing to me

And you

You can sing me anything

The book of love is long and boring

And written very long ago

It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes

And things we're all too young to know

But I

I love it when you give me things

And you

You ought to give me wedding rings

I

I love it when you give me things

And you

You ought to give me wedding rings

Terror Time

by Ewan MacColl

This song is about the traveling people of England and Scotland. “Winter—that's the terror time—no place to go nor doesn't know where to go. Doesn't know any place to go and sit. And it doesn't matter whether it's snowing or blowing. You've got to go.” (Maggie Cameron, Inverness traveling woman. Recorded in a bow tent at Cookson's field, Alyth, Perthshire, 1964.)

Heather will fade and the bracken will die

Streams will run cold and clear

And the small birds will be goin'

And it's then you will be knowin'

That the terror time is near

Where will you go and where will you bide

Now that the work's all done

And the farmer does not need you

And the council will not heed you

And the terror time has come

The woods give no shelter, the trees they are bare

Snow falling all around

And the children they are crying

And the bed on which they're lying

Has frozen to the ground

The frost will not lift, and the stove will not draw

There's ice in the water churn

Through the mud and snow you're sloshing

Trying to do your bit of washing

And the kindling will not burn

Needing the warming of your own humankind

You draw near a town, and then

The sight of you's offending

The police they soon are sending

And you're on the road again

The next phase

The funding phase is all over, and now I wait for all your dollars to hit my bank account so I can make a deposit on some studio time. Maybe I'll be recording by this time in August! 

Thank you again, everybody. I literally couldn't do this without you. 

Kickstarter project fully funded!

I can breathe a sigh of relief: you all have been so generous and lovely, and have put the project over the top. This album is getting MADE. If you haven't preordered and would like to do so, you have until July 15, 2021:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/emilygroff/a-celtic-harp-album-by-emily-groff?ref=a622jd