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We asked some of our favorite songwriters to write a portrait song about a dead U.S. president. Why? A little post-9/11 patriotism, probably, albeit warped by the morbidity and sarcasm of our post-Vietnam generation. That's why all the presidents had to be dead.We started with songwriters we know and love. They often suggested someone else. A few folks heard scuttlebutt about the project, and came to us. Good people kept coming to us after we had assigned every dead president. So we doubled up on all of the two-termers, and quadrupled up on FDR. One thing we never did was wage a campaign to attract famous songwriters or bands. It has been our experience that name acts often will lend their name to a side project, but precious little of their expensive creativity. It's the hungry, talented unknowns who can always be counted on to deliver heart and soul. The relatively famous people who are writing dead president songs for us (e.g., Peter Stampfel of the seminal Holy Modal Rounders, Rinde Eckert of the downtown NYC art/theater world) are the sort of people who don't know how to give less than their all. There were no rules and no restrictions as to genre or approach. Though patriotism partly inspired the project, we neither requested nor expect for every - or any - song to be flattering to its subject. Our only hope is that we get a bunch of very different songs about a very unusual species of person - those who served (or scammed) as president of the United States of America, and then died. Croaked. Bought the farm. More about the inspiration for the project. Involves arcane poetry and the philosophic pleasures of commissioned works. Derrick Bostrom on Dead Prez. Founding member of the mighty Meat Puppets and Friend of Skuntry (and aspiring writer) riffs on morbid presidential lore. Field Notes. The stories behind researching this project and writing these tunes.
The Presidents (in order of death):
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