Peter Alsop‘s SONGS TO CHEW

WHEN JESUS WAS A KID

It’s Christmas time again D

And the mall is really weird.

Everyone gets stressed out

Christmas shopping every year. D-A7

I have to stop and wonder,

Looking at my Christmas list

When Jesus was a kid,

Would He be doing this? A7-D

I know He was a baby,

But did He ever cry?

Did Jesus wet His diapers,

Or were they always dry?

Did He use a bottle

Before He used a cup?

Did Jesus throw things on the floor

Fo...

When my buddy Utah Phillips recorded my song, ‘It’s Only A Wee-Wee, So What’s The Big Deal?’, he introduced it by saying,

“Now here’s my idea of a kids’ song folks! Full bore, overhead cam, spoke wire-wheels, no holds barred damn kids’ song! None of that ‘knicky-knacky-nu’ stuff we were stuck with when we were kids. When’s the last time you actually said ‘wee-wee’ in public? ‘It’s only a wee-wee, so what’s the big deal? It’s only a ...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is YECCH! from my “Wha'D'Ya Wanna Do?" album.  I play this song at almost every family concert because almost veryone loves screaming "Yecch!" at the top of their lungs!  It's a 'scream-along' so you can join in with us!  It's full of make-believe and playfulness, and it's an example of how story and oral tradition grab our attention and engage us. There is an air of danger wh...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is LET'S FACE IT! from my “In The Hospital" album.  It addresses facial disfigurement, and all the unsettling emotions that we go through when we feel that we're different than others around us.  It's difficult emotionally, whether we're an adult or a child, to figure out how we're going to behave when others stare at us and feel uncomfortable. We have to cope with our own fee...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is INSPECTION.  I wrote it with Penny Pefley, one of the pediatric nurses who helped us make our “In The Hospital"album.  My buddy Bill Harley and I 'rap' this one.  Our personal privacy is challenged regularly in a hospital by doctors, nurses and assistants who want to make sure we're okay.  They even wake us up at night to make sure we're sleeping soundly!  Today's kids are t...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is JUICE, from my “Stayin Over" album.  It's an uncomplicated song, about the complicated concepts of 'love' and 'energy'.  When we feel we’re not loved, we feel empty, and we search for any kind of 'juice' to fill us up, like booze, sex, drugs, money, food or approval from others.  But when we’re actually filled up with 'love', we don't have to go on that search.  We can pass ...

    Today we'll 'Chew' on the title song from my STAYIN' OVER album.  Do you remember the first night you went to 'stay over' at a friend's house?  Maybe it was a camping trip with other families.  These adventures are loaded with memories and lessons we learned from our social interactions with others.  It's a big step in independence for most kids.  When we do it, we face separation from our own bed, b...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is WIGGLE.  It's a song about freedom!  We all “wiggle” when someone won’t let us do what we want to do.  'Being alive!" means that in one form or another, we just need to "wiggle"!  Some of us wiggle emotionally because we don't want to be 'pinned down'.  Some wiggle physically because we'll jump out of our skin if we can't get down and run around and chase the kitty cat!  And...

Today's 'Song To Chew' is THE PRIZE from my “Did You Walk?" album.  It's song lyrics without any music, so actually, it's a poem.  We're constantly being taught that it's important to 'come in first', to 'win the game', to 'win the race!'  Some of us do it to get approval from others.  Some think we have to do it so we can become financially independent and better able to care for ourselves and our loved...

    Today's 'Song To Chew', SANDWICHES, was written by Bob King.  One of the subjects that kids love to sing about is food!!  We'll 'chew on' ideas about kids and food and the interconnectedness of all the human things we do in our lives.  There's 'enjoyment' and 'sharing'.  There's 'mooching', which is trying to get something that someone else has, but not wanting to 'share' what we have.  'Mooching' is...

    Today's 'Song To Chew' is NEEDLE-EE NOODLE-EE.  I wrote it with Penny Pefley, one of the two pediatric nurses who initiated our "In The Hospital" album!  "Pokes" or "shots" are probably the number one fear children have about being in the hospital. Few children escape this experience, whether as an injection, an IV start, or a blood test.  It may be impossible for a child to understand why they're be...

    Our Song To Chew today is MY DAD'S A JUNGLE GYM from my “Uh-Oh!" album.  I used to carry my daughters around on my shoulders, or under my arms when they were little.  Sometimes they'd get tired on a walk, and I'd carry them on my back.  Eventually they'd wiggle free, hop down and run around again.  Dads are generally less 'risk-adverse' than Moms, which means that we let our kids take more risks than...

   Today's 'Song To Chew' is MY BODY RUNS, from my “Did You Walk?" album.  I wrote this song at the request of two women who were marketing their Digi-Walker Pedometer, a small device for one's belt or pocket that counts the steps we take to be sure we get enough exercise every day.  Kids have lots of questions about their own bodies and how they seem to work sort of automatically.  "My body runs, my bod...

   Today's 'Song To Chew', WHA'D'YA WANNA DO?, is about 'wanting to have fun with a buddy'.  As I listen to the lyrics more than 40 years after I wrote them, they're about being joyous.  That's mostly what kids wanna do, 'find support as we go through our lives joyously'.  Support makes it less scary to take risks, so when we take a risk, even if it doesn't work out, we learn that we can overcome obstacl...

    This week's 'Song To Chew' is THAT'S MY THANG! We get a "fire in our belly" about something that involves all our attention, often to the exclusion of everything else around us.  Our 'thang' is something we want to achieve, or simply a task we want to complete.  Our 'thang' isn't really 'work' because we enjoy doing it.  Many of us love the work we do.  Artists often work for little or no money becau...

    Today we'll "chew on" the song, COVERS ON OUR HEARTS from our musical play "Pie In The Sky".  It takes place in a small town with a big nuclear reactor.  The kids in town want to get rid of it because there are so many health problems, but the grown-ups are slow to respond.  It's based on the Pied Piper fable, about a magical piper who's hired to rid the town of rats.  He leads them all out of town b...

    Our 'Song To Chew' today is WHILE I'M SLEEPING, written with Diane Gates.  She and Penny Pefley are pediatric nurses from Seattle Children's Hospital who encouraged me to write and record our 'In The Hospital' album.  I got my buddy Bill Harley to join us, and we won Parent's Choice 'Best Album'!  This song addresses difficulties we face with going to sleep, particularly when we're in a hospital. We ...

    Our 'Song To Chew' today is UNDER THE RAINBOW.  Some might call it a 'woke' song, because it's full of hope.  There are some very mystifying things in this world.  I haven't got a clue about how they happen, so I don't rule out prayer, magic, supernatural religions, being "woke" or anything else that might help us all survive together!  I know that 'when someone holds a belief, we can't get them to c...

Today's 'Song To Chew' is NEVER SPEAK WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL!  It seems like a 'fun little song', but it opens doors to deeper topics like, 'Where do our rules come from?' and 'How do they become laws?'  Kids deal with 'grown-up rules' all the time.  We teach children rules, so they'll learn to be socially responsible adults; people who care about other people.  Adults who sing this song with their kids se...