Memorial Day w/Dan Jones

Local singer-songwriter-folkie-punker Dan Jones has a great song on his first album, For Your Radio, called "The Great Flood Museum," about a Memorial Day family reunion. I first heard Dan opening for Reclinerland at Sam Bond's Garage about four years ago. Dan was playing an acoustic show, accompanied by a dude with a single snare drum and some brushes. He played Husker Du and Roger Miller covers, and a dozen or so gorgeously spare, heartbreaking, funny originals. I bought his record immediately after the show, and have listened to it at least weekly for the past four years. Dan is from a suburb of Kansas City, MO, and like lots of poets, went to school at Iowa.

"Everybody's comin' home memorial day
There will be kids sleepin on the porch.
Bobby's bringin' home his first boyfriend
and Carrie got a budget divorce.
Mom's in the kitchen complainin' about the sink
and I'm in the rec room, tryin' not to drink
I think I'm gonna go downtown.

Everybody's comin' home memorial day
there will be Buicks up and down the street.
We've got a radical aunt who brings her own seitan,
and she won't sit at the table with meat.
Dad says "Geez, that's a darn good steak."
She wants to know if there's refined sugar in the cake.
Cousin Virgil went and drove her electric car in the lake
because he heard the water level was down."

And so on. Really good stuff.