For the lyrics to the songs, click on the lyrics link from the pull-down menu.
Many thanks to Chris Durman (University of Tennssee Music Librarian, musician and friend) for helping me find information about some of these songs. To see a list of sources that we referenced, scroll to the bottom.
This Is Our House 
The saying that “the earth is in our hands” may be a cliché, but there is no doubt truth in it. As the human population grows, we have to face the fact that everything we do affects not just the planet, but each other and all of the other creatures who share this world. It is becoming more and more like we are all sharing the same house. So, we better all do our part to keep it clean and in good running order.
Learn the hand motions from the video below:
I Like Bugs
This song was first inspired by a poem written by Ashley McMillin’s pre-school class at Piedmont School in Jefferson County, TN. The additional inspiration came from my daughter Willa’s love of bugs. When I play this with a group of kids I like to have them play along with shakers, shaking as hard as they can on the word “eye/I” in the chorus. It’s also fun the last time through to sing the word “eye/I” for as long as we can, shaking our shakers like crazy. At the end of the song I list a bunch of kinds of bugs. You may never have heard of some of them. Look them up.
The Juniper Webworm turns into a moth (also known as Dichomeris marginella). How many more bugs can you think of?
Paw Paw Patch 
The pawpaw is a large edible fruit native to the Appalachian Mountains. It has a tropical flavor like a mango or papaya with a hint of banana. It has large black seeds and a skin that turns black like a banana as it gets ripe. It is full of vitamins and grows on trees that tend to appear in clumps - thus the "pawpaw patch." I first learned this song from Marjorie Bright of Greeneville, TN. Her version, the one I sing, is the only one I've seen or heard that says "poor" little Susie. Most of the versions say "pretty" little Susie which give the song a little different flavor. Many versions use different names as well. One of my favorites is "pretty little Nellie." Another way to sing it is to put the name of whatever child is nearby in the song. The song was historically sung by Appalachian children as part of a play-party (or singing) game. In these games, the name generally changes each time through to eventually include all of the children who are playing. Click here for the games: Pawpaw Patch Singing Games
Learn the hand-motions from the video below:
Mole In The Ground
I first heard this song at a concert many years ago – perhaps it was John McCutcheon. I’m really not sure anymore, but it really stuck with me from that moment. Years later, I created my own version from memory and thus pulled the song back into the oral tradition – a tradition from a time when songs weren’t recorded or written down, but rather, were handed down by word of mouth from musician to musician, generation to generation. One of the common results of music being shared in this way is that it grows and changes. And as I have now heard other versions of this song, I realize that mine is truly my own. I have borrowed words from others versions I have heard over the years and the result is what is on this recording. When I met my wife Steph Gunnoe, who I now perform with in The Lonetones, I found that she knew a very different version. You can hear that version by clicking here: Mole In The Ground performed by The Lonetones
“Mole In The Ground” is often associated with a fellow by the name of Bascom Lamar Lunsford III. Lunsford was a lawyer by training, but his true passion was the music of the rural areas around his home in western, NC. He was a fiddler, banjo player, a singer, a song collector and a songwriter (check out his most famous song “Mountain Dew”). He also played a key role in the development of the modern folk festival and was instrumental in preserving the flat foot or buck dancing tradition that then developed into the more popular style of clogging.
Here’s a video of flat-foot dancing:
De Colores
This is a traditional song that is common in the Spanish-speaking world and beyond. It likely originated in Spain, from whence it came to Latin America and was transformed into what it is today. The words are a tribute to the beautiful colors of springtime and send a message to pay attention to the beauty all around us. A translation can be found by clicking on the lyrics link from the pull down menu.
I first heard this song as a teenager one summer in Austin, TX when I was visiting my dad. We were at an outdoor children’s event and the singer was none other than my stepmother, Sarita Rodriguez. A wonderful singer and songwriter, Sarita taught me many songs and helped me learn to sing in Spanish. So, naturally, when she was visiting from her current home in San Antonio, TX, I asked her to sing on this recording.
Here's what Sarita has to say about the song: "I first heard De Colores in the mid to late sixties...I was still at home in Panama and the Catholic church was in the midst of great change...moving away from the traditional mass in Latin to the people's mass in the Spanish and "learning to be the people's church" with all the many new meanings! The cursillistas (adults, like my mother, who attended cursos, series of workshops that focused on teaching about the "new approach to being a practicing catholic") made De Colores the signature song of the movement - sung many times, at many gatherings by many groups and of course, taught to children... Up lifting, easy to sing, inviting the shoulder to shoulder sway and so full of metaphors - the richness of life; colorful fields of springtime flowers, birds in flight, rainbows of colors, spring's renewal, lightheartedness all wrapped in bright light.... I came to know this song again here in this country in the 1980s, when I moved to Texas and found that the same metaphors lifted many hearts as the signature song in the Migrant Farm Workers movement...and as I think about it ...it was perhaps for the same reasons...changes in the church, changes in how we lived our everyday life and finding peacefulness in the promise of colorful fields of springtime flowers, birds in flight, rainbows of colors, spring's renewal, lightheartedness all wrapped in bright light...as we sway to De Colores!"
Here is a video of the song being sung by a street musician in Mexico:
I've Been Workin' On The Railroad
There are many folk songs about trains and railroad workers that date back to the 1800s when the railroad system was first being built in the United States. (For another example, check out the free download of “John Henry.") African Americans and early immigrants were the primary builders of our railroads, and though the origins of this song are not clear, it does seem to have roots in the African-American “work song” tradition – perhaps related to the song “I’ve Been Working on the Levee” which was sung while building Levees along the Mississippi River. As with many songs in the oral tradition, words have been added and taken away over the years. There is some evidence that “Dinah’s In The Kitchen” was a separate song that was added later.
My earliest memory of this song is from age four. My mom and I, along with my two aunts and my grandma and grandpa flew across the ocean to visit my grandma’s birthplace of Wales. As we drove around site seeing, my grandma tried to keep me entertained by singing songs. This is the one I remember most clearly. What my grandma couldn’t seem to do with her singing was to keep me from getting car sick as we drove around the countryside. My thirteen-year-old aunt Elizabeth kept saying she was homesick, so every time I felt car sick, I would say I was homesick too. And then I’d throw up.
I asked my good friend Nancy Brennan Strange to sing this song with me because the song also reminds me of her. I remember Nancy singing this song in her children's shows, and I am deeply indebted to her for introducing me to the world of children’s music and setting me on the road that has led to many school shows, concerts and festivals over the years.
Hole In The Bottom of The Sea
I love songs that add something new every time through and then repeat them all backwards, in sequence, again and again. Some of my other favorites in this category are “The Green Grass Grew All Around,” “She’ll Be Comin’ Round The Mountain,” and “There Was An Old Woman Who Swallowed A Fly.” “Hole In the Bottom of the Sea” is the one I remember from the earliest in my life. It’s a song that my Dad sang to me when I was a kid. I got him to sing it with me on this recording when he was visiting from his home in Texas. On our recorded version, we stop after the “flea on the hair on the wart….” But I often keep going. What can be on the flea? A leg? A germ? Make up your own and sing it forever.
Peanut Butter and Jelly 
This song is about my best friend from pre-school. Alizabeth and I were such good friends that the other kids at school gave us a nickname – Peanut Butter and Jelly – because we always “stuck” together. In a very modern turn of events, Alizabeth and I became brother and sister when her mom married my dad. They had a son together, Morgan, who Alizabeth and I share as a half-brother. Our parents then got divorced, leaving us related in no legal sense, but still through the bond we share from that time in our life. Alizabeth now lives in New York City and works as a photographer and teacher.
When I perform this song for groups, I like to get them to clap the 3-2 beat that is so central to the song. It’s a fairly common rhythm found in many music cultures around the world. In the United States it’s sometimes called the “Bo Diddley beat” because people associate it with the somewhat eccentric early rock pioneer, Bo Diddley.
On a side note, one theory about the origin of Bo Diddley’s name is that it came for the instrument the Diddley Bow. The Diddley Bow is a one-stringed instrument with West African roots – not unlike the banjo.
The Crawdad Song 
Crawdads are like a freshwater lobster. They are in the crustacean family and have their skeletons on the outside of their bodies. I used to catch them in the streams of middle Tennessee where I lived as a teenager. “The Crawdad Song” is one, like “Pawpaw Patch,” that is often associated with play party games. 
People all over the world eat crawdads. In the United States, crawdads are associated with Louisiana cuisine. Click here for a crawdad gumbo recipe.
Another of my favorite songs that mentions crawdads is the Hank Williams song "Jambalaya." In the song, he refers to them as crawfish. Jambalaya, a-crawfish pie and-a file gumbo 'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-oh Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou.
Jenny Jenkins 
Jenny Jenkins could be called a "courtin' song," an "answer-back" song or a "dialogue song" - in other words, a song in which two people sing back and fourth to one another (in particular, a boy and a girl). The songs could be used as a game in which the boy would ask the girl a question and see how quickly she could come up with a rhyme. For example, it might be used as an ice breaker at an event such as a dance. For instance, a boy could ask a girl "What would you wear, oh my dear, oh my dear? What would you wear (insert girls name)?" If the girl couldn't come up with a quick rhyme, then she would have to dance with the boy.
The song likely has British roots. It seems to be, at least in part, derivative of a song called "Jennia Jones." In that song the plot is somewhat different, having to do with the main character's death. But despite the difference in plot, colors are a central element in both songs. In "Jennia Jones," they come into play as follows: Red is for the firemen... Yellow is for the dancers... Blue is for the sailors... Purple is for the mourners... Black is for the devil... White is for the angels... "Jennie Jenkins" use of colors also seems connected to British and early-American superstitions about colors - i.e. red for sin, blue for fidelity, white for purity. Whatever the original meaning associated with the colors, it's fun to try to come up with new rhymes and even new colors for the song. For instance, what else rhymes with green? How about, "I won't wear green, cause I'll look like a bean"? Or how about violet - "I won't wear violet cause I wanna be a pilot." Now you try!
Mama Said No
This song is perhaps more for the parents than the kids. As a parent of three, and a kid myself once, I am certainly familiar with this age-old method of getting what you want.
Hikin' Blues
Hiking can be hard. Hiking can be tiring. Hiking can make your feet hurt. But it’s always worth it. There’s nothing more inspiring than getting out in nature. 
I have been singing for years at the Great Smoky Mountain Institute at Tremont. It’s a wonderful education center where school groups come to connect with people and nature by being immersed in the mountains. Most of the groups I sing for are made up of middle school students. Often times, the next thing on their agenda after my program is a night hike. I’ve always been inspired by how the staff manages to make hiking exciting to this age group. All of those hikers are the ones who inspired this song.
El Barco Chiquitito 
I learned this song from my step mother Sarita Rodriguez. Here is what she has to say about it: "I was a bilingual and bicultural child... I am a bilingual and bicultural adult...I never lost my first language ...After more than 30 years in the field of education I have concluded that the best way to raise bilingual children is to speak to them, read to them, and sing to them; always teaching the beauty and power of words in their first language. When I started school, my father, a Puerto Rican who was sergeant in the United States Army, was stationed in Ft. Lee, Virginia. My mother, a school teacher from Panama, was fearful that my brother and I wouldn't be able to talk to grandmother when we returned home. So, she ensured, in the same way I describe above, that the language of the home was Spanish. By the time I learned to sing The 10 Little Indians in kindergarten, I could already sing El Barco Chiquitito, a traditional children's counting song taught to children in many countries of Latin America."
Try counting along to seven in Spanish. A translation can be found by clicking on the lyrics link from the pull down menu.
Freedom Song Medley
The songs in this medley – “This Little Light of Mine,” “Woke Up This Morning,” and “Run, Mary, Run” are all based on African-American spirituals. The spirituals that developed during the years of slavery are generally defined as religious songs. They often were. But they were much more than that. Spirituals were used as a vehicle to express democratic values and community solidarity. They were used to motivate and inspire. They were used to express frustration and protest. And sometimes they were even encoded with specific information to help slaves escape to freedom.
The spirituals were a way for slaves to express all of these things without suffering the brutal consequences that would have resulted if the slave masters knew what they were saying. One specific example of encoding double meaning is the common Biblical image of crossing over the river of Jordan that shows up in songs like “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” While the religious imagery was important, this image also refers to the desire to cross north over the Ohio River, away from the land of slavery, to freedom. Likewise the desire for freedom and salvation that many spirituals speak of was not only in regard to the afterlife but to a better life in this world as well. 
It is no surprise that many of these spirituals were revived and reworked to fit the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s. The first two songs of my medley were common civil rights songs alongside other spiritual-based songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize.” “Woke Up This Morning” is a good example of a song that was reworked to fit the new era – i.e. “I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Jesus” was changed to “…stayed on freedom.”
All of the songs in the medley share several things that tie them back to their West-African roots – i.e. they all contain musical elements that are common in music from West Africa. For example, they utilize call and response – i.e. when a leader calls out a line and everyone else responds. They also have short repetitive verses making it easy to improvise and fill in new words. Can you think of some more places that you could let your light shine? Finally, they are rhythmically syncopated – i.e. they put the rhythmic emphasis somewhere besides the downbeat (on-beat). Try clapping along when the hand-claps begin on “Woke Up This Morning” and feel the emphasis on beats 2 and 4 (called the backbeat or off-beat).
A great website dedicated to the story of the spirituals is: Sweet Chariot: the story of the spirituals
Here you can read more history, see lyrics, and listen to recordings of all three songs in this medley plus “Drinking Gourd” (see below). Click here for a lesson plan that explores all of the ideas discussed here: Sing For Freedom
Drinking Gourd 
In this song, the image of the drinking gourd refers to the constellation called the Big Dipper that points to the North Star. The North Star was used as a reference point to show slaves the direction to escape to freedom. The rest of the song is a set of instructions for how to find the way north.
Like the spirituals discussed above, “Drinking Gourd” was encoded with meaning that could not be spoken out loud for fear of being punished by the slave masters. The song is probably the most famous example of a song that was used by the Underground Railroad movement which helped transport and hide people on their journey to freedom. Of course, the most famous member of the Underground Railroad movement was a woman named Harriet Tubman. Check out this website to learn about Tubman and follow a slave along the Underground Railroad to freedom: The Underground Railroad: escape from slavery
This Is Our House - Live With Phil Pollard
This is from a performance I did with Phil Pollard at the Fountain City Library. Phil and I played at all 18 branches of the Knox County Libraries that summer and made up a lot of new verses. Try making up some of your own verses. All you have to do is think of two animals and something about each of them. Then comes the tricky part... you have to make it rhyme.
I Like Bugs (hidden track)
This is a very early version of this song. I saw a poem about bugs on teacher Ashley McMillan’s pre-school classroom board, wrote a verse and a chorus on the spot, added a bit more over the next week, and then went back and recorded it with the kids.
Animal Fair (hiddlen track)
This is a song I remember my dad singing to me when I was a kid. His version ends differently than many I have seen and heard. Whereas he ends by saying "that was the end of the monkey," many
versions end by saying "and what became of the monk, the monk, the monk..." (apparently repeating until you are exhausted). The song seems to have roots in the minstrel tradition that began in the 1840s. The song then became part of the college singing tradition in the late 1800s - a tradition that we now associate with glee clubs and such, but was even more wide spread back in those days.
The minstrel tradition played a central role in America's musical history. The tradition produced many of the first pop songs that this country knew - i.e. songs that were not simply shared through an oral tradition like folk music, but were written and sung for profit.
Unfortunately, this tradition had a dark side that makes it almost embarrassing to remember and talk about. Often referred to as "blackface minstrelsy," the tradition generally involved white performers painting their faces black and portraying racist images of African-Americans. Jim Crow and Zip Coon were early minstrel characters. The shows combined music and comedy (with African-Americans as the brunt of the jokes).
Many of the minstrel songs that originally had very objectionable, racist lyrics have found their way into our folk-music tradition with "politically corrected" lyrics - i.e. the racist parts have been taken out. I have found no direct evidence of racist versions of "Animal Fair," but if it was part of the minstrel tradition, those versions may have existed.
Other minstrel songs that are still a part of our musical vernacular include "Oh Susannah" and "Camptown Races" by early pop songwriter Stephen Foster. "Dixie" is another song with minstrel roots, and the list goes on...
Much of the humor associated with early country music (originally called "hillbilly music") can be traced to the minstrel shows. Unfortunately, even the tradition of blackface continued into the early days of country music (you can see evidence of this in pictures from early country-music radio shows such as the Grand Ole Opry). But alongside this tradition, was the more common tradition of using minstrel-style humor with the "hillbilly" as the brunt of all of the jokes, thus resulting in many musicians making fun of stereotypes of themselves. In either case, the use of stereotypes to sell music is an unfortunate technique that has yet to die out in the music industry.
Sources
Alan, John A. &, and eds. Lomax. Best Loved American Folk Songs (Folk Song: U.S.A). 3rd Edition ed. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1947. Print.
Carawan, Candie, and Guy Carawan. Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement through its Songs. Montgomery, AL: Newsouth Books, 2008. Print.
Carawan, Guy. Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?: The People of Johns Island, South Carolina - Their Faces, Their Words, and Their Songs. New Ed ed. Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 1994. Print.
Dan, and Fox. World's Greatest Children's Songs. Revised ed. Van Nuys: Alfred Publishing, 2008. Print.
Ebinger, Virginia Nylander. De Colores. New York: Schott - Folklore From The Hispanic Tradition For Voices, Recorders And Classroom Percussion. - Performance Score - 733712 - Book - - - 36 Pages - Lenght 12 - Width 9 - Weight 5.5 - Schott, 2009. Print.
Encyclopedia of Appalachia. memphis: Univ Tennessee Press, 2006. Print.
Linscott, James M. (introduction). Folk Songs of Old New England. Detroit: Archon Books, Hamden, 1962. Print.
Luther, Frank. Americans and Their Songs. New York: Harper And Brothers, 1942. Print. McNeil, W.K.. Southern Mountain Folksongs (American Folklore Series). New York: August House, 2005. Print.
Mcneil, Keith, and Rusty Mcneil. Colonial & Revolution Songs (American History Through Folksong) (American History Through Folksong). 2 Cassettes ed. Cambridge: Wem Records, 1989. Print.
Orozco, Jose-Luis. De Colores and Other Latin American Folksongs for Children (Anthology). New York City: Puffin, 1999. Print.
Raph, Theodore. THE SONGS WE SANG a Treasury of American Popular Music. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1971. Print.
Sandburg, Carl . American Sandbag. New York: Harcort, Brace and Co., 1927. Print.
Sharp, Cecil James. English folk songs from the Southern Appalachians. London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1960. Print.
The Alabama Folk Lyric: A Study in Origins and Media of Dissemination. Maine: Bowling Green State Univ Popular Pr, 1979. Print.