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BABIES ALL OVER THE WORLD
I combined two very old rough drafts of the same song together to make this one. I think I wrote both versions in the late 1980s. Originally it was called "People All Over The World" but I changed it to "babies" because I am all about the little ones!  I hope kids will listen to the song and imagine all the people all over the world and how everybody's doing something at every moment. I love the baritone saxophone in this one!


I AM A LOOSE BALLOON
The Presidents had a song called LOOSE BALLOON that I wrote but I wasn't really happy with how it came out. I didn't feel like it captured what I thought of and felt when I would see a balloon floating by itself across the sky. My brother Tim helped me out a lot with writing lyrics and focusing the feel of this song. We came up with the idea of that lonesome rambler narrative like Roger Miller's KING OF THE ROAD. Once we figured out that perspective the song sort of wrote itself.


SUNNY SUMMER SUN
The lyrics to this song took a million years to figure out. It started out being about a family of bears in a river then changed many times before ending up being about staying cool in the summer sun. I loved the music so much that I stuck with it and now I love it! Maybe this song will help when the kids get grumpy at the beach?

OLD COOKIE
This one also started out as a fragment from along time ago. This is another song that came out of my frequent habit of looking at something small and weird and giving in an inner life. I saw part of a stale cookie on the sidewalk one day and imagined it's whole story. I wanted this one to kind of sound like a lost Bob Dylan song if Bob Dylan ever sang about old cookies.


SUPERSONIC MOTORCYCLES
One of my neighbors has a big loud motorcycle and in the summertime he turns it on in his backyard and it always scares me! When I am out in the world and walking by the seaside and someone comes blasting by on a motorcycle with no muffler it scares me! Basically I am scared of those loud motorcycles and thought I would write a song about it that does not tell them to stop but just lets everyone know how I feel. I went out and bought a special distortion pedal to get a special fuzzy guitar tone for this one.

AWESOME BLOSSOM
There is a busted up old guitar on the wall of a little restaurant on Vashon called Pure and one day after a walk in the woods during the best part of Spring I went there to eat and while my food was being prepared I wrote this song on the old guitar about how bursty the world is in spring. I am also singing about how a child grows and shines like an awesome blossom.


SPOOKY BABY
When my son was little he would register protest with me and his mom by lowering his chin and raising his eyes and looking at us intensely and saying "spooky baby...." in a low scary voice. It was so cute that it quickly became I catchphrase around the house. I did a demo of the song way back then almost 20 years ago and finally got around to recording it now.


TOY BOAT
I wrote this one a couple of years ago but it was called CHEETAH and was basically just about how fast the cheetah is. It never felt really right so I stripped the lyrics away and came up with this idea the tongue twister toy boat thing. So it's sort of a song about trying to say toy boat and it's also the song about my toy boat that you will get if you can say toy boat over and over again.


PUT THIS MONKEY TO BED
When I was a little kid I used to put on the Beatles song EVERYBODY'S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT FOR ME AND MY MONKEY at full volume and run around the house refusing to take my bath. I guess I wrote this song from the parent's perspective a little bit. You know when a child is excited and crazy and we'll get ready for bed. Maybe if you parents out there singing this song to your crazy child in the evening it will help you wrangle them into the nighttime routine.

INVISIBLE LIZARD
This started out as a Dukes O' Pop song called LITTLE LIZARD. The only words were "MY LITTLE LIZARD!" shouted as loudly as possible! I noticed that it was common for me to meet little baby fans at shows and they would suddenly go all shy right when they approached me. So I thought it would be good for those shy kids to have a little anthem. Now I call them "invisible lizards" and pretend that they are changing color to disappear when they feel shy.

LOVE YOU MORE
I wrote this for my daughter Josephine when she was little. I didn't think I could love my kids and more every day but it seems like that's what happened! I just wanted to bottle that feeling of trying to take a mental snapshot of every moment when my kids were little so that I would never forget those times. Kind of like a mouse in that book "Frederick" about the mouse who absorbs summertime in the form of poetry and then when the other mice are cold in the winter he reminds them what it's like to feel warm.

WHAT IF?
This one came to me about 10 years ago when I was writing for the second album but it never got recorded until just recently. It got lost in the cracks and it was like finding a shinny penny when I uncovered it again. As parents we all have to answer those "why" questions that can go on forever and ever. I thought it would be fun to make the kids questions impossible situations to illustrate how weird and random the world can seem to a kid.


TWO IS ONE MORE THAN ONE
I left a voice mail message for a friend named Robyn Hitchcock and sang my message as a song and that is how this one started out. I kept a recording of it for years and finally turned it into this song. I had a great time making all the voices of the animals I am trying to call in this song. We all know that animals have phones right? I am pretending they do!

SOUR SWEETHEART
I took the music for this one from a super old song called MANKY MIMI that I think was released on a funny old cassette I did back in the 1990s. This is another case of loving the music but not loving the lyrics to the original and trying new ones. Sometimes kids get that crazy sensory overload thing where they can't control their emotions. Underneath it all is your sweet kid but for now the sour one is louder.


WEIRD WEIRD DREAM
I used to give away custom songs for auctions and fundraisers and this one started out that way. A kid gave me a series of dreams and I chopped them up and put them to music. I would credit that kid here but I don't remember who it was. Eventually I wrote all new lyrics with my own "dreams" in there and made it an official Caspar song.


CAR WITH THE LIGHTS LEFT ON
One dark fall night I went to the supermarket and there was an empty car with its lights on sitting there in the rain. It just made me sad to think that the car was patiently waiting for the owner to return and might run down its battery before that happened. I still can see that poor car in the dark rain all alone. I decided not to resolve the story but just leave the car in the state of forever waiting.


THE BALLAD OF THE BABYPANTS
Oh my goodness, this one was a long long long journey. This is the true story of the actual Babypants that are part of my name. I really did find them and they really did spark creativity in me after a long blank period where I could not write and I really did loose them. Have you seen them? This started off as a slower song but I redid it to bring a little more energy to the groove. I love how it came out and if you find those babypants let me know!


CATERPILLAR JAZZ
I was on Vashon Island at our house in the summertime just sitting in the garden taking in the vibrant buzz of a hot summer day when I thought I could hear caterpillars playing jazz. At least I pretended that I could and this song came flowing out. It is important to stop and just let the energy of the world flood into your being every once in a while. If you do you will be treated to a symphony of tiny grooves.


WHEN I WAS LITTLE
This one is very much from the perspective of a grown up remembering the beauty of being a child. It was originally on a cassette I made with some friends back in 1987 called The Dukes Of Pop. I was listening to old songs one day and thought this one would make a good Caspar song. I tried a few different ways to approach the lyrics and rewrote it many times but basically ended up using the original lyrics with the addition of a couple of verses. I loved my childhood in the 1970s and this is a love song for those times.


SNOWY BLANKET
The Christmas record WINTER TIME! I put out a couple of years ago was supposed to have this song on it but it just was not finished at the time so it had to sit that one out and wait for this record to see the light of day. I just wanted to capture that amazing feeling of looking out at fresh snowfall when I was a kid and feeling like the whole world had been replaced by a smooth frozen white world.

FIVE WHITE DUCKS
Long long ago when my second record MORE PLEASE! was coming together I wrote a song called SIX WHITE GEESE about a bunch of geese that go wandering out and get plucked up one by one by various evil forces. It was a bit of an attempt to write something in the vein of the old Grimm's Fairy Tales. Those old poems are pretty dark but I just couldn't make the song work lyrically or musically after much trying so I shelved it. Also Weird Al's daughter Nina said it was TOO scary! I brought it back out and made the geese into ducks and had them joining each other rather than being plucked up and made the music more rocking and the song came back to life!

DAYDREAMIN' ALL DAY LONG
Originally this song was called LITTLE SUGAR and was a basic song about parental love for baby that I wrote as one of 4 demos for a project I did with Swedish Hospital to celebrate their new maternity wing completion. The verses were surreal and silly so I changed it to be about cooking up silly images in my mind and how I loved to daydream about weird stuff with my kids when they were little.

COME DOWN HERE MONKEY
When I was a wee child of 4 years old I was taken to the zoo and the legend has it that I tried over and over to climb into the monkey exhibit and expected the monkeys to simply descend to talk to me if I asked enough times. The part where I was trying to climb into the monkey exhibit was immortalized in the song MONKEY RIVER and the part where I want to talk to the monkeys is the inspiration for this song.

KNEE HIGH THING
Kids grow up do fast. This song is about that moment when a kid is mobile and walking and just about as tall as your kneecaps. I just took that idea and mixed it with weed and plant imagery. I wrote the original version of this tune in 1989 so it is another one that has been sitting around for a long long long long long time.

ANIMALS TALK
My son Augie wrote a poem when he was about 9 years old about a series of animals eating each other. I loved the groove and the idea of a chain of animals being the only real point of the song but his version was a bit gruesome. So I worked the lyrics into a new shape and recorded it with only voices and then slowly over many years found a musical vibe to fit the song. It is a pretty different feel for a Caspar song but I hope you dig it. Thanks for the inspiration Augie!

HAPPY HEART
This one started out as a song that I wrote specifically for a girl named Rena Mateja Walker Burr who started a fundraising campaign for an organization called Wellspring Family Services. Wellspring focuses on taking care of families who are in crisis and this young girl decided to do a fundraising campaign by going door-to-door in her neighborhood asking for loose change to give to Wellspring.  Her story was so inspiring that a whole campaign dedicated to motivating young kids to think about philanthropy was born. As part of that campaign I wrote this song for her. Originally it has slightly different lyrics about saving pennies and how they could add up to create real change. I'll do the lyrics a bit to be about the joy of having a baby but the theme of expressing love for each other is the same.

I DON'T REMEMBER THIS SONG
As I remember it my daughter Josie and I made this up when she was super little. She says she doesn't remember that which seems pretty appropriate for a song about not being able to remember a song! Just a song about not remembering something that might help you remember something.

TURN YOUR FROWN AROUND

Back in 1997 this song was called BOO BOO COW and was trying to be a Presidents song but did not make the cut. I always loved the feel and the shape of it but the lyrics were super abstract, which is probably why it never got used before. I settled on this idea of how special it is when a  child is upset and a parent can turn things around for that child and how safe and happy and loving that interaction is.

SHOW AND TELL
This one is just me having fun with silly images and a groovy groove. I included a ton of key changes to make things musically interesting. Just let your mind open up and see what I see and you will have fun with this one!

THIS LITTLE LIGHT ON MINE
I have always wanted to cover this song but just didn't know exactly how to do it. When the coronovirus hit and the shelter in place directive became real I felt kind of scared and nervous about things and I found myself gravitating toward this song. As I recorded it I felt better and remembered that during dark times I need to encourage my creativity and hopefully help others to do the same.

ROCKIN' ROBIN
I played this at a home and garden exhibition many years ago because the organizers requested it and loved doing it live but never played it again. Recently I found out that the copyright had lapsed on this tune and it is now in the public domain. That news item reminded me of the tune so I bopped out to the studio to do my own version. Go bird go!

LIVE LIKE A BABY
Originally this began as a parody of sorts of a song by a friend of my son's in Bellingham named Joey. He had a song called LOOSSERR that was super catchy so I did a parody about wanting to feel like a baby called FEEL LIKE A BABY. I felt like I needed to take the idea of feeling and living like a baby and make my own song because I have been toying around with that as a theme for a song for many years but had not found the right feel for it. The parody ended up not feeling quite right so I wrote new chords and melodies for it and knocked the new version out in one day of inspiration. Don't forget to see the world through beginner's eyes as much as you can.

MOSQUITO
I was thinking one day that I had never done an instrumental on one of my albums and so I sat down with a guitar and channeled the great Dick Dale and the Ventures and came up with this little thing. It is sort of my answer to TEQUILA! Try flying around the room with your little mosquito wings and shouting "MOSQUITO!" while you listen to it.

CUTEST LITTLE BABY
I think this is the last of the batch of songs that I wrote while my son Augie was little and I would lay him on a blanket and improvise songs about how much I loved him while he smiled and giggled. I thought it would be fun to dress it up in a bit of a modern style with chugging guitars so it didn't get TOO cute!

CHIMP IN A SUIT
What would you do if you opened your front door and there was a chimp wearing a suit on your stoop? This song would not be any help at all in that situation. I wish I could offer you more help in that situation but all I have are questions and no answers. Sorry.

WANNA STOP TIME
This is another one about how fast kids grows up. I remember the feeling that I just wanted to freeze time as I gazed down at my kids when they were super little. Each of those moments seemed to stretch on forever. At the same time I wanted them to grow and be free so it is a mixed bag of feelings for me.

BREAK OF DAWN
Originally this song was about how parents will stay up all night with their kids no matter how hard it is on them but it ended up sounding like the parents were complaining so I changed it to be about nocturnal animals. I love the quiet spooky hushed vibe on this one. When I wrote it I was kind of channeling Alice in Chains believe it or not but I ended up toning down the dark harmonies that were all over the original version.

ANOTHER DAY
I have a song called RISING SUN that has been around since I lived in Boston in the late 1980s that I have always loved and have toyed with and hacked apart to make variations over the years. I toned the original down from its loud rock roots and made it about the cycle of days coming and going. It's just a little relaxing meditation on the passage of time.

WHEN SLEEP COMES
This one is based on SHE'LL BE COMIN' ROUND THE MOUNTAIN but I turned that melody into a lullaby. I liked including images of snoring babies and chainsaws in this one. Just a simple lullaby about how sleep pulls you in and that moment of giving up and going to sleep that kids have such a hard time with. Don't they know how delicious sleep is?

LIGHT THE STARS
Kate and I were having friends over to dinner and I started to eat some of the appetizers and she said "save the snacks for the people". I put down the snacks and took up the guitar and sang that line to a little melody and eventually after 7 years of goofing around it became this lullaby. I have this one fading in and fading out so if you put this song on repeat you can leave it on in a kid's room and it will be a perpetual lullaby loop that will hopefully get them off to dreamland easily.

 

 

 

THE ANTS GO MARCHING IN
I took the original music from the traditional song about these little ants and made a song called MYSTERIOUS THINGS out of it on a previous record because I never thought that the tone of the music fit with the lyrics about ants marching. This time I took the original lyrics and expanded them and put them to new music that feels more like marching to me.


BABY'S DRIVING A CAR
This song started out as a high-energy song about me and my son Augie called "PIGLET AND ME". It was a fun silly tune about me bopping all over the place with my infant son but somehow the lyrics were not 100% right. I then found a couple of songs I wrote back in the late 80s that were kind of about the idea that somewhere someone is doing EVERYTHING at any given moment. I hacked up the old songs and smashed the lyrics into the melody from the song about my son and got this ditty.


TERMITE
I had an old instrumental from the early 90s that I made with a drum called a Dumbek and one day it popped up on random play while I did the dishes. Suddenly I saw this army of termites marching toward my house to eat the whole thing in one big massive attack. I started marching around the kitchen and singing out loud! I ran out to the studio and tracked this immediately. Musically I am making a nod to my old mentor Mark Sandman and his band Morphine here. I miss you Mark.


HIDIN' AND SEEKIN'
Originally the song was titled POP CULTURE and was written way back in the mid 1980s for a band I had in college called "The Dukes O' Pop". I was like the music a lot and thought it would make a good vibe for a cast for song. It took me a while to get the lyrics right on this one. I had the wrong perspective for a while. I love the way it turned out and that in part is brand-new to the tune and one of my favorite parts.


FUZZY BUZZY BUZZING BUG
In college in the 1980s I had a band and we had a song that I write called "PANTS TOO TIGHT". In looking at old songs to revamp for Caspar I found a recording of that song and loved the music and started trying to find a new subject matter. Then I was playing with a little synthesizer and made a little buzzy farty noise with it and started to imagine a mosquito buzzing around. Then I remembered that in the summertime I have a super hard time going to sleep with a mosquito in the bedroom and a song was born!


PICKLE HOLIDAY
This started out a song called "THE MONKEY IS A MAN" about seeing a monkey doing things that a man would do. I have SO many songs about monkeys that I started to cast about for a different theme. I have always sung placeholder lyrics about pickles but never had a pickle themes song so I challenged myself to write a pickle song! This lucky pickle gets a luxury vacation out of the deal.


I'M A BEE
I thought it would be fun to write a song from the perspective of a B flying around on a beach in the summertime desperate for a sweet treat. I am provides the verse lyrics without writing them down and allowed myself to be repetitive and sort of random with the lyrics. I had a lot of fun recording this one and making it sound kind of unique and buzzy like a bee.


FUNKY WILDERNESS
I have had this song in the works since 1996 believe it or not! The lyrics were always really abstract and they ended up still being kind of abstract in the final version but they were REALLY abstract back in the day. I love nature and I think this is a love song for a fantasy of being able to live outside all the time.


ALLIGATOR
This is just a funny vision of an alligator that wants to eat me. The music is from an old song I wrote called SUNSHINE from 1999. I was never crazy about the lyrics I had written or the recording of the song that The Presidents of the USA did so I decided to give it another spin. It took a few years to get the vibe and the lyrics right. I think I rewrote this one about 5 times before I got it to feel right!


SPOOKY SPOOKY SPOOKY
When I was a kid I loved to be a little bit scared by music and movies. When looking at old nursery rhymes I noticed how dark and spooky they could be so I wrote a song that celebrates spookiness. I hope it does not scare anybody too much because this song gives me goosebumps everything I hear it!


HAND IN HAND
This is another one from the mid 1990s that got a facelift for the Caspar thing. It was kind of about a relationship that did not work out and I changed it (of course) to be about that lovely interdependence that is so clear in nature and love. I really enjoy the laid back vibe of this song and the rich harmonies were super fun to put together.


PAY ME NO MIND
I played a show a long time ago at a kind of family farm place. Before I went on I walked around the grounds and had this funny experience where all of the animals ignored me when I tried to lure them over for a howdy. As I walked I made up this song and recorded it on my phone. I found it many years later and finally recorded it. I just want to be friends with every animal I encounter. Is that too much to ask?


ROUND AND SQUARE
I don't usually take on big ideas in songs but this one kind of wrote itself and ended up being about the idea of tolerance and differences and a source of strength. I believe that human beings are getting better over time and I am proud to be part of our ascent to greatness!


TWIST AND POUT
When I kid is so tired that the only solution is sleep but they still want to keep the party going you get the inspiration for this song. I love that silly transitional time when kids are too excited to go to bed because being awake is so much more exciting and they get so tired and upset that they cry while trying to keep the party going.


HERE BOY COME HOME
There was a song that I wrote years ago called "SCRAPPY PUPPY" that ended up on a Presidents of the USA album but I was not quite happy with that version. I rewrote it to be more of a ballad with all the details of the dogs experience to paint more of a picture. I fee like this song is a musical number from a musical that does not exist yet!


REASONS FOR THE SEASONS
Kate and I are planning on doing a long Picture book called "Reasons For The Seasons" eventually but right now we can't find a publisher for it. I love this song so much and I'm not sure the book will ever happen so I decided to do it shorter version of it for this album. I had a lot of fun playing around with the different instruments for each season. I guess it's my cartoon version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons"!


SLUGS IN THE DUST
Kate and I were on a walk and we came upon a slug crossing a dirty dusty road. The poor thing was covered with dust and dirt but it was also just making it's own way with a certain determination that I found inspiring. I sat on the title for a long time and then one say the song popped out. I had to rewrite it about 4 times to get the tone and lyrics exactly right but I am glad I did because I love this one a lot! We are all just slugs in the dust really.


THE ZEBRA QUESTION
I know that there is probably an answer to the zebra question but I really don't want to know it so don't tell me! I like to squint at zebras and imagine that they are white with black stripes then shift my thinking to black with white. So I wrote a song about it!


HEDGEHOG IN THE FOG
I wrote and recorded 3 versions of this one before I hit on this particular feel. This song was inspired by a short animated piece I saw of the same name form 1975 by Yuriy Norshteyn. It is an extremely cute and magical bit of animation with tissue paper creating the layers of fog. I wanted to use the atmosphere of the animation to create a song that comes from the same world.


NAP IN THE AFTERNOON
This song is now and forever dedicated to my daughter Josie. When my kids were little I got up with them every morning that I was home from tour with the Presidents. Every verse in this song is a specific memory of getting up with Josie who woke up earlier than her older brother Augie. Josie and I had a few hours during the part of the day when the sun was rising and the world was quiet and this song takes me back to those moments with my baby daughter.

JOHNNY JACKRABBIT JONES
One day I was driving away from my house up the hill and this tiny little rabbit rocketed out of the underbrush right in front of my car and zoomed into the underbrush on the other side of the street. It was like a little furry bullet. I just immediately started singing this song as if it was already written. I recorded it in one sitting when I got back home. Thank you little jackrabbit for being so fast.


NOODLES AND BUTTER
I simply love noodles and butter. I love them. I love them so much. I really really really love them. They are my favorite. I love noodles and butter. I do. I really really do. I love noodles. I love butter. I love it when they go together to make the rules and butter. I really do. I just do.


LONDON BRIDGE IS FALLING APART
This one started out as a cover of a song that I did in the Presidents called Jennifer's jacket. I was trying to find a new feel for it but it just didn't work with the old lyrics. I took the lyrics away and decided to right about London Bridge involving all kinds of other characters from nursery rhymes. I guess this is sort of a song about a song. I love the download Johnny Cash vibe. This one's one of my favorites.

THERE WAS A SMALL FLY
I thought it would be funny if a fly started a band with the goal of playing a show in Japan someday.  These are the kinds of thoughts that I have! So I organized it like a classic game of addition where you add more and more animals as you go. It was fun write and fun to record and fun to listen to so I hope you like it! I love that they actually get to go to Japan in the end thanks to their booking agent who is a horse.

RHYMES WITH ORANGE
This song went through a whole bunch of revisions before I landed on this feeling. My brother Tim really helped me out on this one. I had a different kind of Jazz field before and then I did it as a pop song and then I tried it as another kind of song and it just never jailed. I also thought it was going to be a spoken word thing for a while with no music. Finally I settled on this way and changed a bunch of the lyrics and edited out averse and finally this thing is finished! This was a song from way back in 2010 so it's nice to see it seeing the light of day.


SITTIN' IN A HIGH CHAIR
I wanted to give this classic tune a bit of a 1960s pop feel with lots of harmonies and groove. I wrote some new lyrics to include more food items for a well balanced menu. I specifically added tofu in cubes because that was one of the big hits in our house when my daughter was tiny. She couldn't get enough of "cubes with magic powder". The "magic powder" was salt!


ANT'S CAN'T DANCE
This song started out as a weird jam improvisational bit in the mid 1990s. Originally the title was JELLY BEAN BRAIN and it had no real story or idea behind it. It was just a blob of crazy words with a cool groove. I stripped off the words and updated the music to work as a Caspar song and now you can dance to it even if the ants can't. The one ant that CAN dance is named Timmy after my brother Tim who is a songwriting partner of mine (and a brother!).

BRING MY CHIMPY HOME
I wrote this one in Japan in the mid 2000s in a hotel room in Tokyo. The Presidents were there to do a couple of shows and I was super duper sick and stuck inside all day. I brought a tiny ukulele with me and passed the time trying to write little songs. This is yet another song about monkeys and/or chimps. I can't stop writing songs with monkeys in them!

EVERYTHING HAS A SONG
My good buddy Johnny Bregar sent me this tune with a note saying he thought I would like it as a Caspar song and I did. Eventually I recorded it and sent it to him to add guitar and snare drum and vocals and a rare collaboration was born. Originally the song was bout how some things have a song and some don't but then I changed it to be about how everything has a song but some are quieter than others. Listen up!

ROLY POLY BUGGY BALL
Long ago I had a neighbor who is about four years old and his name was Max. One-day Max was walking to my backyard and he opened his hand and he had a little roly-poly pillow bug in his hand. I just started singing about the little bug while Max stood there and rolled the bug around his palm. That was a long time ago and this says stuck around a little idea for a long time. I finally put the effort into finishing it and I'm super happy with it. It sounds roly-poly in the middle part is so weird.

WHO IN THE CIRCUS IS ME?
This used to have a different title and it didn't really have a story. It was just a bunch of images of the Circus. My brother helped me figure out that I should be writing about myself in the circus. So one day when I took a seaplane up to an island to have lunch with my daughter I wrote all these lyrics on some napkins. Writing lyrics on napkins on the plane is a messy way to write a song. But I did it! I'm pretty proud of some of the rhymes in the song.

SHINE IT UP
I have had this little song waiting in the wings for many many years. I made it for the second album MORE PLEASE! but it didn't fit and it has struggled to find a place ever since. So it is with great joy that I introduce to you the little song that could! Just a little reminder that even when things are poopy you can choose to see life in a bright light way and help yourself feel better.

LITTLE BROWN PENCIL
I walked into Kate's studio to tell her something and my eyes landed on a brown colored pencil that Kate had sharpened so many times but it was barely there. For some reason my heart broke for the little tiny pencil. I ran out of the studio and immediately started writing this song about how the pencil thinks everything is brown because it's been used so much for so many different drawings and if it ever found out that everything is not brown it would be super sad. I had to rewrite the lyrics a few times to get it right but I think I finally did.

CALL THE CROOKED CROWS
One time when my son was little and my wife was running the vacuum cleaner I started to sing along to the drone of the vacuum. I sang "caw caw caw call the crooked crows, caw caw caw someone call the crows" over and over and my son joined in and we had a good old vacuum cleaner jam session. That little rifts stuck with me all those years even though I never recorded it and eventually it resurfaced and became this song about a bunch of crows that play at a scary party and won't stop.

DUCKY IS THE NAME OF MY BIKE
I used to have a bike named Horsey.  For many years I did not have a car and I just rode Horsey around In Boston New York and Seattle. Horsey had everything stolen off of him except the frame over the course of the 10 years that I rode him. Finally I had to get rid of Horsey because he became unsafe. That's when a yellow beach cruiser and named it Ducky. I had written a song about loving to ride my bike but it was not feeling right. One day I was out on ducky and the melody and words for this song just came flowing through me as I road my little yellow bike by the ocean. I love you Ducky!

DROWSY DOPEY DOZY DOG
Just a simple song about a dog that feels drowsy. Sometimes it's nice to be lazy. Sometimes it's nice to not do anything for a long time. I guess this song is dedicated to that special skill. There's so much thrilling achievement that sometimes we forget that we have the option of being a drowsy dopey dozy dog.

FLY HIGH BRIGHT FIREFLY
Sometimes you just need a little encouragement to take a chance on yourself. That is what I am trying to tell the little worried firefly in this song. I loved working in this style with the background vocals and do wop instrumentation and groove.

I'VE BEEN SLEEPY ON THE RAILROAD
Working on the railroad sounds really hard. I prefer to be sleepy on the railroad. Trains make me so tired and groggy that I decided to change the lyrics to the old standard and make it into a lullaby.

EENY MEENY MINEY MO
I thought it would be funny to put the classic rhyme use for choosing something up against a groovy jazzy background. I was listening to a bunch of instrumental bits that I had lying around and one of them just made me start singing these lyrics over it and it worked! My daughter Josie helped out by singing on the song along with me. She did a great job and really made the track come to life.

GROGGY BABY
I love the word "groggy" so much and wanted to write a song using that word so I did! This is about that classic state that kids get into when they are so tired but are not in bed yet. One time my son Augie fell asleep on the top stair at my brother's house with his head on the landing and his body trailing down the stairs. He was probably the inspiration for this song.


MADE FOR YOU THIS LITTLE SONG

This is a silly song about the act of writing a song. I wrote two completely different versions of this song. One of them was longer than one minute so I decided to pick the one that ended exactly in one minute. It was really fun to come up with all the little moments and sound effects in this one. It's jam-packed for such a tiny tune!

BOOKWORM
Long ago when my son was small and he was a very messy eater we would always have a little cloth on hand to clean them up. We called that cloth a burp cloth. We were always looking for the burp cloth and I made up a song about looking for that little cloth. In the end I felt the song BURP CLOTH was a little bit yucky. I decided to make it about a worm that reads a book everyday and doesn't want to come out to play. The lyrics just fell out of my brain and the song was born.


EMOTIONAL ROBOT
This song started its long life way back in 1985. I went to Missouri to a family reunion when I was 20 years old and my father's brother made a speech during the gathering that was very moving. He was a tough farmer and seeing him get emotional impressed me. I wrote a song called EMOTIONAL COWBOY about that feeling and it was released many years ago. As I looked through my old songs I realize that I wanted this idea of being emotional despite being seen as strong to reach a wider audience so I reverted to be about a robot that has a heart. I think this will be the one and only time that I ever sing about robots on a Casper Babypants album.


BE IN THE SEA
I was thinking about the similarities between the ocean and the desert. Then I was thinking about all the animals that live in the desert and what would happen to them if they lived in the ocean. Then I thought about all the animals that live in the ocean and what would happen to them if they lived outside of the ocean. So I just wrote a song about creatures from the ocean living in the desert and in the sky and in outer space and wishing that they could be back in the ocean. Maybe this song is about being nostalgic for home? I just love imagining an octopus in weightlessness!


YOU ARE THE BABY
This is another song from what I call the "blanket sessions". When my kids were very little I would lay them on a blanket and sit there with a guitar and play improvisations about how much I love them and how cute they were. A bunch of songs came out of this and two of them are on this record. This one was for my daughter and is just a simple groovy love song reminding a baby that a baby is a baby is a baby. A definite nod to the Beatles influence on this one.

DISCO HIPPO
Originally titled EVERYTIME I SEE YOUR FACE this one was about a super cute baby face. Albums came and went and I just felt that there was something not quite right about it. Finally I decided to try stripping the words away and painting a different picture. That's when DISCO HIPPO just came spilling out of my mind and onto the page. I love the idea of a hippo gliding around and getting down on the dance floor. I am enjoying making songs about dancing. There are three on this record so try to find them all!

A DANCING TREE
You found another dancing song! I thought it would be fun to do a song at live shows where I ask the kids to pretend to be a tree. They can shake their branches and leaves and kick up their roots and move about. I like to pretend that trees secretly have the ability to pull up their routes and run around. I have a whole other song I'm working on based on the legend of trees that can move. In the meantime here's a tree song you can move to.

BUBBLE RAP
One day I was wrapping up some CDs to send to a store that sells my CDs and I was staring at the bubble wrap in my hand and realized that if you took the "w" out of "wrap" you would end up with "rap". I started thinking about hip-hop and how the person rapping is usually talking about how strong and amazing they are. Bubbles are weak and vulnerable and I thought it would be fun to write a rap song from the point of view of something that is not strong. Musically I'm kind of trying to send everybody back to the early 80s in New York when rap was born. I'm pretty proud of some of the rhymes and the song! It poured out of me in one sitting and the vocal you are hearing on the track is a temporary vocal that I put down right when I wrote it but I was never able to beat so I left it in there.

MY LULLABY GOT TOO LOUD
Over 30 years ago I wrote a song called POLITICAL SONG about how it is hard to write a political song because the words you need to use are too long. Words like "antidisestablishmentarianism". That recording was never released at all but eventually it mutated into this idea of trying to write a lullaby but getting too excited and making it so loud but that it's not about going to bed at all anymore. Originally this song had a lot of guitars on it but slowly over time I took them away and replace them with more of a marching band oompah symphonic sensation. Stay up all night kids! (not really...go to bed)

ALWAYS KEEP A UKULELE IN YOUR TRUNK
I was watching a documentary about George Harrison and in that doc Tom Petty told a story about George coming to his house to give him a ukulele. George and Tom strolled through the garden playing ukuleles having a grand old time. When George went to leave he asked Tom if he wanted more ukuleles. Tom said he was okay with one ukulele but George insisted and opened the trunk of his car to reveal a HUGE pile of ukuleles. The moment Tom Petty finished telling the story I realize I had to write a song about this incredible moment. I think it's good advice to always keep a ukulele within arms reach! You never know when you need to elevate your mood with the sparkly sound of a uke.

WATCH PETUNIA DANCE
I originally wrote this song for a little girl named Daisy who was a fan of mine who was battling cancer. I wanted to help her to envision herself leaving her bed and dancing around much like a flower would leave its flowerbed to dance around. In the end I changed the name but the idea of a dancing flower that leaves it's flower bed and can move freely and dance as much as it wants to is the main idea of this tune.

ANYTHING FOR YOU MY LOVE
Here is another song that was written as I stared down at my little boy when he was only a few months old lying on a blanket in the living room as I played guitar and made up songs on the spot. This is just a pure improvisational expression of love from a parent to a little new baby. It's fun to remember when they needed so much help especially once they've grown and gone to college like my little boy has.

RUBBER BALL
Originally this song was about a rubber ball that was impossible to throw away because it would keep coming back. It was a bit too spooky and creepy so I made it about a rubber ball that I love instead of one that I'm trying to get rid of. All of a sudden the whole thing clicked. There's a great ghost movie that I love called "The Changeling" that features a scene in which a man throws a rubber ball off the Aurora bridge in Seattle in an effort to get rid of it because it reminded him of his daughter who had passed away. When he gets home the rubber ball is bouncing down the stairs of the house supposedly set in motion by the ghost of another child living in the home. I love that movie and wanted to immortalize that rubber ball in a fun positive way so that is what this song is about. There are no ghosts in this song so don't be scared!

SIMPLE SYMPHONY
Many years ago I wrote a song for the Seattle Symphony to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of their youth outreach program called Soundbridge. The song was called SOUNDBRIDGE IS TEN YEARS OLD and featured a collaboration between me and two little kids and a little known composer named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. One of the little kids came up with the melody for the chorus and the other came up with the idea of doing a roll call of the instruments of the symphony. Then I called up Mozart and got him to do the middle part of the song, which features his amazing composition Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Thanks for the help Mozart!

WHEN A PENGUIN MOVES TO CALIFORNIA
I watched a movie called "Orange Sunshine" about the psychedelic counterculture in Southern California in the 1960s. The movie was so well done and so evocative with saturated sunshine orange and yellow super eight film that I immediately picked up a guitar and started writing when the movie was over. Originally it was about a baby moving to California but somehow I thought of penguin moving there was a little more bizarre and fun. I like the way the penguin has romantic experiences and practical experiences. It's a big deal to move to a new place.

ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN
This one was originally going to be on SLEEP TIGHT but I decided to hold it back for the next record because it was a little too bouncy for that one. This is just a simple mellow song based on the old classic ON TOP OF OLD SMOKEY. I love the groove in this one and I love any excuse to play slide guitar.

I THOUGHT I SAW BATS
Way back in 1990 I wrote a song called ARKANSAS ANGST.  It was bizarre and abstract and kind of sad and depressing. I loved the melody and the guitar part but never felt like it was a song I can bring to a band or play live. I decided to crack it open and turn it into a Caspar song about five years ago and it's taken that long to figure out an angle and get the story right. This is based on an experience I had when I was a little kid where a giant crowd of bats smacked into my window and woke me up. It was super scary and I never forgot it.

DROPPED MY LOLLYPOP
I had an instrumental for many years called DROPPED LOLLYPOP And I loved it. Eventually I decided to put words to it and make it about a lollipop that I remembered getting at Disneyland when I was a little kid. I didn't drop the one I got but in an effort to add a little narrative tension I decided to tell the story of a lollipop that fell in the sand at the beach. I can't think of anything sadder for a little kid. But don't worry it all works out in the end. I had a lot of fun layering my voice 12 times to make the crowd of people shouting "NOOOO!".

HEAD SHOULDERS KNEES AND TOES
This is my version of the classic song that parents love to sing two their tiny babies. I thought it would be fun to add a whole bunch more body parts than just the head the shoulders and the knees and the toes. I hope you have fun trying to keep up with me and pointing to all the parts of your baby while you listen to this song.

ME AND YOU
I recorded two completely different versions of the song before I could settle on which one would get released. One was high energy and kind of like a hillbilly song and the other was this one that you are listening to. In the end I thought the sensitive presentation served the intimacy of the song better and having it be a knee slapper. A nice mellow album closer about the love between a baby and a parent.

FIRST STAR
The guitar line in this song was the first seed planted. The tune remained an instrumental for a long time and I was afraid that it would stay that way since typically if lyrics don't come soon new ideas will stay instrumental forever. I tracked it hoping that words would come and none did but one day as I played it on the porch the words just trickled out and the vision became clear. Sometimes you just have to be patient and wait.

GO SLOW SLUGGY
At one point I was working with Jack from Recess Monkey on a travel bingo game for the car that would have audio mini song cues for indicators as to what square to fill on the game board. He and I wrote dozens of mini songs that were about 30 seconds each. One of mine was called SLOW LORIS and even though the project never came to completion I always loved that tune when it popped up as I sifted through old ideas for new songs. I changed it to a slug because it feels more vivid to me than my own fuzzy and indistinct notion of what a Loris looks like and spends it's day doing.

JUST A KITE
I have had this song waiting in the wings for many years. I lost track of how many years but it has been a while. I identified with Charlie Brown when I was a kid. It seemed that his hard luck mirrored my own enough that having the same initials did not surprise me once I realized that was the case. I couldn't fly a kite either and that was the inspiration for this song. I decided to write it from the perspective of the kites that I failed to fly when I was a kid.

COZY
In 2000 I made an album of kids songs to benefit PEPS (Program for Early Parent Support), which included a version of the classic Irish song TURA LURA LURA. That album did not get distributed outside of the PEPS families that I made it for so I have been slowly remaking some of those songs and putting them out on Caspar Babypants albums. I decided to expand the lyrics and rewrite them to be about the sensation of being cozy in your home while the storms and scary natural phenomena rage outside.

PALE MOON
Way back in 1998 I put out a record under the name The Giraffes. This song was on that record and it was a great version but when I went to update it for a Caspar Babypants record I got excited to update the lyrics. Way back when I wrote it I just had this kaleidoscopic sort of cut away vision of the woods at night and the cast of oddball characters that were crawling around in the pale moonlight. I could sing about the moon all night long! Another example of a simple translation of a surreal vision in my mind to a melodic lyrical miniature song world.

ANOTHER HEAD HITS THE PILLOW
I started out singing this as a funny mantra to myself as I painted the porch of my cabin in the woods. The lyrics were a bit different and the feel with upbeat and high energy. I fully recorded the song that way under the title LOG JAM but somehow it felt unfinished or something. A few years later I remembered that tune and changed the vibe to be slinky and dark. It feels like we are flying around fast all over the world seeing a psychedelic montage of creatures succumbing to sleep one by one. I love this one because it makes the hairs on my neck prickle.

IT'S BEEN A LONG DAY
Back in college I wrote a funny repetitive song called SUZANNE that only had four lines but I always loved the feel and the melody so when I came upon it as my computer played random songs one day I felt compelled to find a way to make it new and fresh. Set in and around the sea I am just asking some sea creatures if they will allow me to tuck them in (as you do!). It was fun to use that synthesizer sound in a Caspar song which is not usually in my palette of noises and instruments.

ALL OF YOUR LIFE
I wrote this song for my second album MORE PLEASE! which came out in 2010 but it just didn't fit on that album or any other album until now. One reason is that recorded and rewrote it three times trying to balance the sentiment with the right musical feel and that took about 7 years. Finally I got it right (I HOPE!) and this sweet little tune made it on to this album. Basically it is saying that no matter what kind of human you grow up to be you should take your time and enjoy letting your journey unfold moment by moment.

LAZY DAISY
This was an old demo from the 90's that had unintelligible lyrics but a good relaxing vibration to it. Last winter I made a project out of listening to thousands of fragments in order to find ideas that resonated with me enough to rescue them from the trash pile and make them into something finished. This is one of them. Let's face it, flowers are pretty lazy. Those bees do all the work!

RAIN AND THUNDER
When I was super little I started taking piano lessons. I loved to play but preferred to figure out the theme song to "The Munsters" by ear than learn compositions by the masters. The title came from an old childhood memory. My friends Dave and Steve that lived down the street did not have a piano but would hang out at our house a bunch and heard me playing. In an effort to write something on the piano together we came up with a song called RAIN AND THUNDER, which was just tinkling the highest and lowest keys on the piano. The low notes being the thunder and the high notes being the rain. It was a little musical joke that I never forgot and eventually I took the title and mutated it into the song on this album. It only took 45 years to fully realize this one!

EARLY MORNING EARLY EVENING
I was trying to capture the hypnotic pulse of days coming and going in this tune. I like the idea that the pulse of a heartbeat and the pulse of a day and the pulse of a lifetime are all the same but some are too slow to perceive.

SLEEP MISTER SANDMAN
I was thinking about the legend of the sandman sprinkling dust in sleepers' eyes and wondering if the sandman ever has trouble getting to sleep or if the rotation of the earth means that he is constantly needed to sprinkle dust in sleepers' eyes and never gets to sleep? Poor guy. This song is dedicated to the late great Mark Sandman as well. He taught me how to play the 2 string and 3 string guitar and he is gone from us but his songs sing on and in that way he never sleeps.

DOES THE MOON HANG LOW?
I tried to rewrite the classic DO YOUR EARS HANG LOW? and make it a high energy rocker but somehow it did not sound right. It turned out that it worked better with new lyrics as a lullaby. Even slowed down the lyrics are kind of dense but I think it works. I love the wah wah guitar in there all distant and watery. My second moon song on this album. I do so love to sing about that moon.

LULLABY IN THE SKY
WOW. This one was a long strange journey that I can't believe is over. It started out as a song called XYLOPHONES IN THE SKY way back in 1993. I had a bunch of friends that all liked to play funny little broken down oddball instruments and we used to go to the beach or a park for the afternoon and play these hypnotic jams until the sun disappeared. I wrote XYLOPHONES IN THE SKY to capture my feeling of vast trancelike joy that I got from those jam sessions. But the song never worked as a recording. No matter how many versions I tried it failed somehow. I tried it quiet and loud and everything in between. Finally I stripped the chorus and rewrote it to be clearer as far as the vibe I was trying to capture. Recording it still proved super hard but I finally struck the right balance and after 25 years and remixing this version 34 times I can finally let this song go!

TEN LITTLE PIGGIES
This snappy little tune started out life as a love song for my newborn son about twenty years ago. I had him on a little blanket in he living room and as I stared at that glorious little kid I sang "sunshine pig making his way through the universe!". The song actually ended up in an ad for the BMW Mini back in the day. Eventually after picking it apart for years to make something else out of it I landed on the rich tradition of those beloved ten little pigs and the new Caspar version was born.


WHERE OH WHERE?
I decided that I wanted to rewrite this classic to include more than just a dog. So I wrote new lyrics about loosing an entire menagerie of animals and all the speculating that goes along with lost pets.


LOVE YOU MORE
This was a straightforward love song for my daughter when she was tiny. I use to wake up with her every morning and walk all over the place with her strapped to me and this was a song that I sang while we walked. I forgot about it and just stumbled onto it while listening to old fragments one day. It was super fun to record and I hope you have fun listening to it.


FREE COUCH
Wow wow wow. For years and years and years I have been noticing abandoned couches by the side of the road and every time I did I would have a little music moment go off in my head that sang "FREE COUCH" instead of "FREAK OUT" but with no idea how to form that little habit into a song I sat on the fragment for years. Then I cracked it open and worked it out so that a young tick that moved to the city is calling his parents and telling them not to freak out because he is safe and sound and living ins a FREE COUCH! Yay. Puzzle solved and the song came out super duper. Put on your dancing shoes and turn it UP.


THIS IS THE WAY THE WOODS WAKE UP
Originally I had this song happening in a zoo but then I realized that zoos could be a bit controversial so I moved it to the woods. I hope this song will help you in the morning with your routine, as you get ready to head out the door. I like to imagine this one being performed in a nightclub in 1960's New York by a dashing flamingo.


PUSHY THE TUG
This is another song where the idea existed for years before I figured out how to make it work as a song. Every time Kate and I would see a tug boat out on the water we would pretend it was named "Pushy" and it had a bit of an attitude of superiority. When it came time to make the song I figured I had to do more than just describe her so I made up a story about another tug named "Huggy" coming along and falling in love with her even though she can be pretty prickly. It's a tugboat love story.


I FEEL BETTER
One day I went into a music store with a wee tape recorder to sample little drum sounds and noises to use for song inspiration (the drum track on FREE COUCH is from one such excursion!) and I ended up improvising a little tune on a keyboard about feeling better. Many many years later after listening to the tape a few times this little jam stuck out as something to build on but it took many many more years before I stumbled on to the right way to sing about this idea of time healing all wounds. Some things are worth the wait.


CUT THAT COCONUT DOWN
One day this song just sprang out of my mind fully formed. I don't know where it cane from but I love it. Just a bunch of thirsty animals that need to get their paws and claws on some thirst quenching coconut juice. None of them can get it together to get the coconuts out of that silly tree. I get thirsty just listening to this one.


MY PANTS ARE ON VACATION
One day my wife Kate was getting ready to go out and could not find the pair of pants that she wanted to wear. Out of frustration she shouted "MY PANTS ARE ON VACATION!". Of course, as is often the case with things Kate says, I immediately heard a song in her silly proclamation and rushed out to the studio to write and record it on the spot.


UNDERGROUND
This ditty started out as a song I wrote for someone as an auction item for a fundraiser. I can't remember what the original lyrics were but I changed it many years ago (another song I have had for a long time!) to be about the secret life of all the underground creatures. I love dirt. My favorite part is the concert hall made of "rocks and roots". I can really see it.


BLACKBERRY PIE
When my son was a wee lad he wrote the weirdest song called "CHIPMUNK FALLING FROM THE SKY". It had a really odd time signature and the "oo wee oo oo oo oo wee" part that I found myself humming to myself for years afterwards. Finally I changed his original lyrics about a chipmunk hitting the ground at terrible velocities to be about a crow that tries to steal a delicious piece of pie and a classic was born!


NO MORE JUMPING
My daughter and I were driving home from town one day when the song "Ghost Town" by The Specials and as I sang along my mind wandered to the old traditional song about jumping on the bed. I decided to expand it (as I do!) and include a bunch of animals instead of just the traditional monkeys in the original. I used a tone for the music from The Specials song as a tribute tot he moment of inspiration.


FROGGIE WENT A COURTIN'
Another old traditional song that I suddenly realized I had not thought about adapting. I changed the lyrics a bit and took the weapons out of Froggies hands in the first verse (!) and replaced them with a ring and a bouquet, which is more appropriate for a proposal! I had fun messing with these lyrics for sure. What a fun party. I wish I had been invited to that wedding.


PUT YOUR BABY IN THE AIR
I slowed this one down so you can really do the movement with your baby and have time to enjoy it and be in the moment. Of course I included some fresh movements so you can shake things up with your kid. It's just a simple moment to have interacting with your baby.


BEDTIME BLUES
Who likes to go to bed? NOBODY! Well, nobody under 6 years old I guess. I wanted to write a sort of classic blues structured song and chose the bedtime these because a lot of kids feel pretty strong emotions around that age old never ending chore of winding down for sleep. I hope that maybe this song helps parents with the bedtime routine.


WHAT DO YOU FIND?
I love to wonder what animals think and the hardest animals to figure out to me are invertebrates. What are those little doo-dads thinking about? In the end I just don't know and that's OK. Sometimes nature is a mystery!


MYSTERIOUS THINGS
The song "The Ants Came Marching" in has always been a favorite of mine. I love spooky grooves but I always wondered why the theme of ants marching was wrapped up in such a spooky tune. So I decided to make the lyrics spooky too so the music and the lyrics would go in the same direction. My good buddy Fysah Sands helped out with some great soul vocals to give it an extra spooky feeling. Put this on when you are getting ready to go out to trick or treat next Halloween!


THE SOFTEST GUITAR ON THE MOON
This came about from an exercise where I put random words together and this title came out of it and I challenged myself to write a song using those words. This is another song that has been looking for a home on an album for a long long time and it has finally found its place. I feel like this song could be in a musical about a guitar that was left on the moon.


WANDERIN' BABY
When my wife and I moved into our new house way back in 2008 we rented a big moving truck. As I pulled out of the parking lot of the rental place I put on the turn signal and it made this little two note rhythm that immediately inspired a melody form me and as we moved all day I sang with the turn signal Eventually after toying with lyrical ideas I saw a stand up comic talking about how toddlers are always excited to run away from their parents but don't have any idea what would happen if they got away and the lyrical idea for the tune was born.


COUNTING SHEEP
When I was a kid I played a composition on the piano called minuet in G by Christian Petzold (it was mistakenly credited to Bach most of the time). I have forgotten most all of the songs I learned as a kid during my 10 years taking piano lessons but this one stuck with me. I added a second part that I wrote myself and a bunch of imagery of relaxing sheep. Usually you count sheep to go to sleep so counting sheep that are relaxing a bunch of different ways should be the MOST relaxing thing to help you sleep. Goodnight!


DECK THE HALLS
This is just a great classic holiday tune! The melody is Welsh and dates back to the sixteenth century and belongs to a winter carol, "Nos Galan", while the English lyrics date to 1862. As with a bunch of these old classics I have tweaked the lyrics to make them my own and give them an updates feel. The solo section in this one is a bit of a nod to Vince Guaraldi who made the classic Charlie Brown Christmas TV special music that I grew up with.
 
JOY TO THE WORLD
The words are by English hymn writer Isaac Watts and is based on the second half of Psalm 98 in the Bible. The song was first published in 1719 in a collection of Watt's writings. As with all of the traditional songs on this album that refer directly to Christ and God I have decided to secularize the lyrics to reflect a more family oriented perspective on the holiday season. I loved making the new middle part for this one. Adding new bits to old songs is on old my favorite things about songwriting.
 
CANDLE IN THE SNOW
There is based on a great old hillbilly bluegrass tune called "I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground". I have always loved that tune but wanted to find a new way to do it so I finally settled on adapting it for this album to be about different light sources in the wintertime. Hope you dig it.
 
JINGLE BELLS
This one was extremely fun to record and sing. I decided to go for a chugging feel rather than an oompah vibe. This song was written by James Lord Peirpont and published under the title "One Horse Open Sleigh" in the autumn of 1857. Even though it is now associated with the Christmas it was actually originally written for the Thanksgiving holiday! I updated the lyrics to be a little less old fashioned in the wording and to flow a bit better for my style.
 
WINTER PARTY
I had a song for years called Cloudy Cloud, which mutated into a song called Snowy Snow and it never really felt finished. I scrapped all the lyrics once I decided to call the album Winter Party I realized I could turn this unfinished song into the title track. So I wrote new verses about all the animals gathering for a party in the winter. Feel free to do a tiny little miniscule wee baby funky dance to this groovy tune!
 
WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS
This one is the most straightforward version of an original Christmas carol. I just turned up the energy a bit and kept the lyrics as they were. It felt right in this case. All I wanted to do was to with you a merry Christmas. Pretty straight forward. YAY!
 
CANDY CANE
I remember being a little kid and waiting patiently until Christmas day when I was finally allowed to eat the candy canes off the tree. It seemed to take forever and ever. Originally this song was just about how awesome candy is but that seemed a little irresponsible since I tend to stay away from sugar to stay healthy. So I sat on it for a few years until this album came along and I gave the candy a new story. I love this high energy little ditty AND I love candy canes in moderation!
 
PUMPKIN IN THE PINES
I wanted to do a cover of Good King Wenceslas but I found myself unable to update the lyrics in a way that felt right. One day during the recording of the album I had a funny vision of a pumpkin that does not rot after Halloween but instead floats around in the woods until Christmas eve and can't rest until it is let in to someone's house and shown some Christmas cheer. The song just poured out of me and came together in a flash! I think I invented the word "decomposted" for this song as well.
 
FROZEN PENGUIN
I took the tune from the French song Alouette and adapted it to be about a little penguin that is cold. Is that possible? Why not! It was fun to track this and make my voice sound different for the different parts. An easy song to join in with and sing along so feel free!
 
O CHRISTMAS TREE
The modern lyrics were written in 1824 by the Leipzig organist, teacher and composer Ernst Anschutz. The original lyrics do not actually refer to Christmas at all or describe a decorated Christmas tree. Instead, they refer to the fir tree's evergreen qualities as a symbol of consistency and faithfulness. I decided to have this one change keys as it goes on so that is gets more and more uplifting. I really love this song. So tender and sweet.
 
THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
The song was published in England in 1780 without music as a chant or rhyme, is thought to be originally French and the melody is by English composer Frederic Austin. As with most old songs I record I wanted to make the lyrics new and more "Babypants-ish" so I changed it all to be about animals of course. So no more partridge in that pear tree. Now it's a porcupine. You are WECOME!
 
SILENT NIGHT
The song was first performed on Christmas Eve in 1818 at St Nicholas parish church in Oberndorf, Austria. A young priest, Father Joseph Mohr, had come to Oberndorf the year before. He had already written the lyrics of the song "Stille Nacht" in 1816. The melody was composed by Franz Xaver Gruber in the nearby village of Arnsdorf. Before Christmas Eve, Mohr brought the words to Gruber and asked him to compose a melody and guitar accompaniment for the church service. Both performed the carol during the mass on the night of December 24. All I did was, again, remove the religious references and make the lyrics more broad based and add a bit of a country feel and a brand new middle part! So it is a bit of a three way collaboration between Mohr, Gruber and Babypants!
 
DAYS GONE BY (AUD LANG SYNE)
I have always loved this song. It is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and was set to the tune of a traditional folk song of the time. Back in the old days I used to go to The Dog House before it was closed down and sing this classic at midnight on New Years Eve with all the regulars. Those were some of the best New Years Eves of my life. I decided to translate the old Scottish saying into English so that kids could understand the sentiment behind the lyrics. I ended up writing a bunch of new lyrics that refer to the original vibe of the song, which is nostalgic and emotional.
 
ALPHABET CHRISTMAS LULLABY
This one started out as a song for Mindy Thomas at Kids Place Live. I made a little Christmas greeting song for her show a couple of years ago. One day I heard it as I was strolling through my unreleased songs and expanded it to be this little album closing mellow tune. My favorite line is "X is for X-mass a handy abbreviation". I was pretty proud of that one! Hope you enjoy this album closing mellow tune.

 
 


BECAUSE I LOVE YOU
When my kids were little I would be the one to get up with them at the crack of dawn everyday while their Mom caught up on some sleep. One morning I was up with my daughter watching the sun come up over the Cascade mountains and I began singing this little song to her about all the love I felt for her and how it made all the bad parts of life seem little. 15 years later she is a teenager and now you all get to hear the song. I love you Josie! I got to use a BIG horn section on this one too.
 
ICE CREAM MAN
This song came from a kid that sent me lyrics through my website. Delaney Murphy sent me this song and I tweaked the lyrics and put it to music and here it is in all it's little glory. I wrote a song for the ice cream man that drove around in my neighborhood when I was a kid and hoped to put it on a Caspar album but this song turned out better then mine so I recorded this one instead. I like the idea that the ice cream man is trying to hide instead of wanting the kids to get their ice cream. So thanks Delaney for the great song!
 
GO! GO! GO!
I just started singing this to myself in the car when I was driving around one day for hours. I don't really know where it came from. I started to think about how the culture of America says "GO GO GO!" and how silly it can all be. The baby in the song has houses in Paris and Tibet and a nanny and a tutor and a mommy and a dog and just goes nuts until he finds inner peace and says "STOP STOP STOP!" So take it easy out there! I love the little sort of African pop solo part in there. That was super fun to make.
 
BANANA BREAD
My Dad was a pretty great lyricist and he and I wrote a few songs together while he was alive. This was not one of them. I found this in a collection of odds and ends that I ended up with after he passed away a couple of years ago. I couldn't believe that I found a song that he had written that he had never shared with me. It was just the chorus and one verse so I set it to music and wrote some more verses for it and before I knew it I had written a Caspar song with my dear departed old Daddy. Love you pop.
 
POP GOES THE WEASEL
Wow, this one was a FUN struggle! I tried and tried to find a way to move this tune into the future without loosing the original imagery and intent of the song. The term "pop goes the weasel" was a slang for loosing a button on your coat in 1800s England. The "eagle" in the story was a pub so "in and out the eagle" was a way to say in and out of the pubs. Basically the song is bout choosing drink over taking care of your tattered clothes or yourself! I decided to change it to be about a band in London in the 1960s that has unexpected success and then tries to stay on the charts but ends up back on the street busking for pennies. A cautionary rock and role fable.
 
TINY HORSE
This song started out many many years ago as an instrumental that was part of a big 800 piece library that I would license to commercials and movies. I always loved the image of a tiny horse but never took the time to turn it into a proper narrative song. Finally I did and boy oh boy was it hard to do! I must have rewritten this one 5 times to get the balance of abstract and narrative to work. You know...a typical song about finding a horse in a shoe then pairing that horse up with a tiny cowboy then watching them ride off to international fame in Japanese rodeos. I am glad my mind is weird or this song would not exist.
 
ANNABELLE PANCAKE
I came across a fiction writer named Ann Pancake and laughed at that name. Then I suddenly remembered the old story about the runaway pancake and how I had not tackled that story yet in song form. So I stretched her name out to Annabelle and tried to write it. The trouble was the rhyming part. I could not paint the picture with the lyrics and make it rhyme at the same time. SO I decided to just talk about the scenes and forget about the rhyming part. It was fun to forget about that challenge and just let go.
 
WIDE BRIGHT EYES
I wrote a sweet slow love song for my wife Kate when we first met called WIDE BROWN EYES and wanted to turn it into a high energy hillbilly jam about looking into your babies eyes and seeing all the boundless intelligence that is in every babies eyes. Babies are enlightened humans and this song is my homage to them and their happy sparkle quality! Justin Lansing from The Okee Dokee Brothers plays banjo on this one. Thanks Justin!
 
MOODY SUSAN
Originally this song was called BEN CONVENTION and it was about a gathering of people named Ben that all had different emotions. That proved to be way too abstract as it turns out so I changed it to be about one person named Susan and all the different moods and feeling that one person can have. I chose the name Susan just because it sounded good after the word moody in the title. It is ok to feel all kinds of thing and you don't always have to feel happy. I was inspired by the amazing Big Block Sing Song series to make this song. Check them out...they are AMAZING.
 
RATTLESNAKE
This is an old public domain song called RATTLESNAKE that I found through the amazing Spider John Koerner (The song SPIDER JOHN is dedicated to him) and in his version there are a whole bunch of animals that he quizzes about how they got their various attributes. I decided to just make it about the snake and just the snake. I love how it bounces along and has that groovy weird breakdown. I like to do a tiny snake like dance to this one and I encourage you to do the same.
 
JELLYFISH JONES
Originally this song was called FROZEN THE FISH and it was bout a fish stick on my plate and how it wished it could swim off my dish and all the things the fish would do if it was free to go. While I had a good supply of rhymes in the "ish" department it was too morbid for my taste. So I changed it to be about a jellyfish that wishes to do all sorts of things on dry land but can't because he has no bones. This is one of two little miniature rock operas on this album. Can you name the other one?
 
SLEEPY SNAIL AND SPEEDY SPIDER
After not hearing from her for a LONG time my old friend Azalia Snail and I were in touch with each other. Of course my mind immediately wandered to snails and then to my recent effort to slow down and do a bit less in life so that I have time to just BE and observe the world unfold. So after a bunch of false starts and lyric revisions this little tale of a slow snail and a speedy spider being unlikely friends was born. Don't be afraid to take time to do nothing everyone. And it's ok to be busy too! Which one are you mostly? Sleepy? Speedy?
 
CHICKEN IN THE CORNBREAD
I picked up a banjo one day and began playing this melody out of nowhere. This is a case of me writing a song that sounds like an old song from long ago that I am updating but it is an original new tune. I love the idea that a chicken will want to peck at my cornbread so badly that it will learn how to fly and time travel in order to get a bit for itself. That chicken is very persistent. I added the "why did you eat my cornbread chicken chicken" part way after recording the song.
 
SMALL BIRD
This is another one that went through a multiple year journey from idea to being finished. We were in Hawaii way back in 2009 and a bird came into our hotel room and Kate and I named him Goober and I wrote a song about him. The problem was that I ripped off The Who's song Tommy without realizing it. Good old "Weird" Al Yankovic alerted me to the blunder when I sent him some rough mixes to check out and so I rewrote the whole song with a new melody and a story about wanting to keep the bird but the bird saying "NO!". All of that took 6 years so you better enjoy it! This is the other little rock opera on the album. I snuck a little bit of an homage to Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen in there in the middle too.
 
MISTER CLOUD
In it's early stages this one was called MISTER POOP believe it or not. It was about how food changes after you eat it into POOP! But in the end (HA! Get it? END?) it was too poopy based so I changed it to be about clouds and how they change shape and form. Plus I think it is fun to imaging talking to clouds. They go through a lot of changes. They know stuff. They are patient and adaptable which are good attributes. I loved rhyming "bottom" with "autumn". That was my nod to the original lyrics.
 
DIGGIN' WITH THE CLAMS
Kate and I used to go to Doe Bay on San Juan Island a bunch years ago to sleep in tents and sit in hot pools. One time when we were there and poking around on the beach this song just came drifting into my brain. I rushed back to the tent and wrote it on a wee ukulele and a scrap of paper. It sounds like a fun challenge to try to dig fast enough to keep up with those little clams. I played it that night at an open mic at the restaurant there but it took 4 years to finish writing it and get it recorded. I am slower than those fast little clams.
 
UNHUGGABLE
I was watching a DVD by The Okee Dokee Brothers where they travel in Appalachia and write songs as they go. It was beautifully done and they sound great. At one point they meet an old man living in a shack in the forest and they hang out with him for a bit. He seemed pretty prickly and like he wanted to be alone way out there but he let them spend time with him anyway. Somehow the music they were playing and the idea of being isolated gave rise to this idea of being unhuggable and things that are prickly in nature. Justin from The Okee Dokee Brothers played banjo on this track and Joe sang harmonies on the choruses. Thanks for the inspiration guys!
 
TURTLE TRAIN
One day Kate and I were having breakfast at our neighborhood grocery store when I was an article about a man who tried to smuggle 35 turtles into the country in his pants! Minutes before I read that I telling Kate  about the fact that I had not written any songs about trains before. She chirped "you should write a song about a turtle train!" and so I did! The song came out of slowing down for a leisurely breakfast in town and turned out the song is about slowing down in life. I think I am more of a sleepy snail than a speedy spider.
 
IF YOU'RE SLEEPY
Many many years ago in 2000 when I made the first collection of songs for PEPS (Program for Early Parent Support) to use in their parent education meetings I had my friend Jen Wood into my studio to sing on a bunch of songs. In the middle of doing IF YOU'RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT we needed a break from the chirpy chipper peppy vibes of the songs we were tracking and I started to play these mournful chords as the tape was running. Jen improvised over it with new lyrics about being sleepy and a new melody and the song was born! It was rough and short though and needed to be recorded for real. That task only took 15 years to complete and now it can finally see the light of day.