A Conversation with Ellis Paul

Five years after releasing Dragonfly Races, Ellis Paul returns to kids’ music with The Hero in You. The album takes a look back at people who have made an impact on American history in a variety of ways. Whether Paul is singing about Benjamin Franklin or lesser-known individuals like Augustus Jackson, he finds an incredibly compelling way to tell their story.

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Dadnabbit was lucky enough to talk to Ellis Paul about his new record — here’s what he had to say:

With the new record, there is a sense of pride about telling the stories of people who have impacted American history.

It was really affirming, both to be an American and write it — heck, even having the ability to write it. I mean, if I was in Afghanistan I wouldn’t be able to write this record. A lot of that was coming up as I wrote. These people are really, really leading figures at creating protection for human equality. Because I’m so far removed from high school history books, it was good to be reminded of the great things from our history.

How do you follow up a kids’ record that had no expectations — how do you match or exceed it?

I think the main thing is realizing the expectations. It’s a side project. I do around 150 shows a year and only a handful of them are kids’ shows — maybe 30 or 40.

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It’s never going to eat up the other half of my career, which is writing for adults or for films or television shows. That said, I take the songs equally seriously, and try to just put as much art and time into writing them. There is a lot of joy in those songs that you don’t find in my adult stuff. I’m glad it’s in my life. It balances the yin and yang. I’m both a dad and artist when I’m writing these songs.

How do you balance touring and being a father at the same time?

My touring is restricted to the weekends. But I’m away pretty much every weekend. It’s very hard on my wife. She balances being a single mom when I’m away and she’s done an amazing job and I’m thankful for all that she does. I’m back home on Monday and here until Friday.

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It’s hard, but this is my calling. I feel compelled to keep doing it.

The new album has a very specific theme. How did the idea come about, and how did you choose the subjects?

My daughters are getting older. I wanted to do an album that was geared towards first and second graders, but all the way up to probably seventh grade. I was a big fan of School House Rock. I had written one song about Benjamin Franklin, but thought, “Why not write a whole record on this?” so I hunkered down and wrote a conceptual record.

Can you see yourself making more historically themed records?

I would love to — they’re a lot of fun. There are people like Jesse Owens, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln. But I wanted to mix it up with some people that are less well known. I’m hoping to do two or three of these records and then move on to maybe historical events if the well runs dry.

How do you find a way to make children’s music financially beneficial to you?

Well that’s the smallest part of my business. I make more money writing and performing music for adults than I do for children. That said, a lot of people that buy my kids’ records buy them at my adult shows. They buy them for their kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews.

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I’d probably say that kids’ music makes up about one-third of what I make. It fulfills my mission as a folk musician, probably more than anything else that I am doing.

What was the appeal to creating children’s music in the first place?

If I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t be doing this. But I wanted them to grow up with music that was mine. So if Dad is away on a tour, they could put me on the stereo. They were able to be a part of and see the process of making a record. It was a great way for the family to come together on a project.

Do you find yourself with more artistic freedom in children’s music?

The rules are changed for kids’ music. I’m allowed to be more funkier with children’s music. I have a hip-hop song, a spoken word track and a cappella song. Those are choices I couldn’t make on an adult record. I don’t want to be so stuck in the singer/songwriter thing and approach the songs in one way. The adult records want to have continuity to them, whereas a kids’ record just wants to be entertaining song by song. The rule book has changed and it’s a lot more free with kids’ music.

What’s the reaction from your peers when they hear you’re making kids music?

I think they get it, because I’m a dad. They know Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, and Greg Brown all did kids’ music. It’s a little weird for the Verve Pipe or They Might Be Giants to be doing this music. But for folk singers it fits in naturally. I’m not afraid of how people view it. I don’t see negativity with it. Whether I’m writing a song for Volkswagen or a song about social injustice, I just want to be known as a great songwriter.

What’s the difference in playing a club where people have been drinking all night compared to kids hopped up on sugar at one of your kids’ shows?

There is not a lot of difference, actually. Sometimes there are crowd control issues at a kids’ show. But there’s nothing better than hearing a song you wrote being sung back to you by 100 kids. It’s just a wonderful feeling.

Watch the First Trailer for “Rise of the Guardians”

Considering the Song: “Buckeye Jim”

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Over the years, my friend Bill Childs and I have had a number of conversations about (and periodically mused about starting a podcast based around) the folk-friendly nature of kindie music — and not “folk” in the way we’ve been conditioned to think of it, i.e. college kids singing about their feelings outside coffee shops, but in the truly traditional sense of the word. As anyone who’s spent any amount of time listening to children’s music could tell you, it’s a lot more acceptable (encouraged, even) for artists to perform traditional folk standards, and the downside of this is that you’ll end up hearing countless versions of “Mister Rabbit” and “Ring Around the Rosie” until you want to cry; I think it’s worth it, though, because it gives us a chance to strengthen our ties to our shared musical history.

These songs have sort of faded into the background for a lot of us, even as they’re playing, but they say a lot about who we are and where we’ve come from. Even though the versions we’re familiar with today have often been bleached of their original meaning, their stories still echo through their chords, and if we really take the time to absorb them, they can offer surprisingly rich rewards.

Today I want to write a little about “Buckeye Jim” — probably not the most over-recorded song in the family music canon, but certainly one that most of us have heard more times than we can count. It’s undergone something of a resurgence in popularity over the last few years, thanks to Wes Anderson’s inclusion of Burl Ives’ version in the soundtrack to Fantastic Mr. Fox, but it’s a lot older than Ives; I’m actually not sure anyone’s been able to definitively trace it back to its source.

“Jim” is part of the deepest folk music tradition, harking back to a time when there really wasn’t any such thing as a “definitive” version of a song; lines were added, subtracted, and absorbed as performers carried them from place to place. The “Buckeye Jim” that survives today has its roots in what’s commonly referred to as the “Limber Jim” group or tree of songs, and shares bits of DNA with everything from “Jim Along Josie,” “Shiloh,” and “Liza Jane” (the latter of which boasts its own rich history and large number of offspring).

My daughter fell in love with “Buckeye Jim” through Elizabeth Mitchell’s version, which is found on her You Are My Little Bird album (along with “Little Liza Jane,” actually). It’s a beautiful rendition of the song, one that emphasizes its lilting arrangement and follows the peaceful adventures of birds as they weave, nest, and spin. She also loves Caspar Babypants’ version, recorded for This Is Fun!, which is a little more sprightly — and works in a Babypants-penned B section that, with its lines promising an end to grief and pain, offers a hint of the song’s original, darker tone.

Both versions diverge from the traditional version Ives recorded, which concludes with a verse about an old woman dying of whooping cough in an old wooden trough, which is understandable, albeit slightly lamentable. Although that verse is kind of horrific out of context — and Ives’ version just sort of drops the listener in as an oh-by-the-way after its lines about red birds dancing with green bullfrogs — that verse isn’t just there to give your children nightmares.

“Limber Jim” shares some of its musical ingredients with “Jim Along Josie,” but where that song offers a sort of willfully goofy minstrel travelogue, “Limber” is a darker, stranger tale, with references to gambling, violence, and various gross, fantastical creatures:

Went down the ribber, couldn’t get across;
Hopped on a rebel louse; thought ’twas a hoss,
Oh, lor’, gals, ‘t ain’t no lie,
Lice in Camp Chase big enough to cry

Bridle up a rat, sir; saddle up a cat,
Please han’ me down my Leghorn hat,
Went to see widow; widow warn’t home;
Saw to her daughter–she geve me honeycomb.

Jay-bird sittin’ on a swinging limb,
Winked at me an’ I winked at him.
Up with a rock an’ struck him on the shin,
God damn yer soul, don’t wink again.

So on and so forth. “Buckeye Jim” takes that basic meter, adds some cuddlier animals, and shifts the focus closer to home. In the version Ives came across, the lyrics warned:

Buckeye Jim, you can’t go
Go weave and spin, you can’t go
Buckeye Jim.

Those lines cut to the heart of the song’s roots as a worker’s (or, more accurately, slave’s) lament — a sort of matter-of-fact cautionary tale about the consequences of breaking rules that can’t be broken, and the death that rewards even those who follow the rules. (The folks at Mudcat go into a lot more detail in this thread — block off an afternoon and go soak in their scholarship.) This commenter at Rootsweb hits it right on the head, I think:

As “a children’s song” or “a lullaby” it might have served several purposes — subtle instruction on fixed class and power differences; caution about any “impulse to flight” and the consequences of acting on such an impulse — or the “wooden trough/holler log” consequences of staying; portable self-comforting if you got separated or sold off from your family, or them dead or killed and you bound out… Then too it’s not hard to imagine its origins as a “working blues”… sing the truths you can’t safely say… keep each other’s spirits up … share sadness, courage, soul, and wit.

All things to think about the next time you’re humming along with someone’s pretty cover of “Buckeye Jim.” And you’ve got your choice of versions to choose from — Allmusic has an impressive list here, and I put together 14 of them in this Spotify playlist, including the versions by Caspar Babypants, Elizabeth Mitchell, Burl Ives, and Ella Jenkins. Enjoy — and if there’s something you’d like to see covered in our Considering the Song series, please let me know!