Sunday Singalong - Camp Songs

 

I've likely used this theme before . . . but there's a lot of material out there!

This weekend I have been attending camp. That is, virtually. Camp Harmony comes up a couple of times a year, hosted by SanFrancisco Folk Music Club. I have been attending online since they started with this platform. It brings me back to times at the camps I attended as a kid. Day camps, overnight camps, one a week long, another 2 weeks. Lots of good memories and a couple of not so good ones. Some of the same songs popped up in the experiences (mostly ones like "Kumbaya" and "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" - that boat has been rowed ashore in a lot of places and for decades!). But a lot of ones unique to the camp or hosting organization (“Great Big Brownie Smile” comes to mind).

So, what camp songs have been part of your past? I learned “Can’t Help but Wonder Where I’m Bound” at YWCA camp (with a bit of adjustment in the lyrics of one verse and omission of another entire verse -  but it was a girls' camp; the enjoyment was still there). It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I learned it was written by my now friend, Tom Paxton – who often would say, in his concerts, when he was about to sing it, “Please don’t say, 'I learned that in camp, Tom.'” I guess others had the same experience. So here’s my link to Tom singing it, with all verses and no censorship (honest, it was very minor – it’s apparently easy to sing “Sometimes when I’m feeling blue” instead of “Sometimes when I’ve had a few” – who’d a-thought? And there are those to whom both statements apply).

"Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound" (as it is on his "Ramblin' Boy" album by Elektra, way back in the '60s, when I bought it).