Raised On Rabbit

  1. Good Morning Jolly Rabbit
  2. Somethin' Good
  3. My Little Friend
  4. Here To Stay
  5. Westlin Winds
  6. Raised On Rabbit
  7. The Wandering Fool
  8. Sticky Bud
  9. Marsal the Shepherd
  10. Here Now
  11. All The Time
  12. The Copper River Grrl
  13. Evening Headed Home



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“It is better to love everything than to try and figure it out.” – Neem Karoli Baba

The divine Fool, or Trickster—one foot in the sacred and one in the profane—appears in many cultures in the guise of Br’er Rabbit, Coyote, Raven, Reynard the Fox, Tanuki the Raccoon Dog, or High John de Conquer. Able, as Zora Neale Hurston put it, “to make a way out of no way and hit a straight lick with a crooked stick.”

Or as Coyote Caroline Casey says, “Against all odds is the odds the Trickster likes.” Leaping out of winter into spring, the compassionate Trickster Fool makes art out of drama and humor out of adversity. This is the powerful magic that comes in dangerous times, the secret of our song and laughter, the blossoming of egalitarian culture.

I think I inherited some of the Trickster blessing from my maternal grandfather Timothy Pool, a merry rascal who lived in a little cabin at the end of a green grassy road under the Ozark hills. Behind the cabin a stream splashed and gurgled beneath the shade of willow trees. Crawdads lived in the water and pinched your fingers when you tried to catch them. The cabin was surrounded by a yard of clover. You had to look hard to find three-leaf clover. Almost all of it was four-leaf.

Grandpa walked with a cane. He was good at using the curved handle to grab me and my brother by the neck so he could tickle us. One time I was running inside the cabin and fell into his crock of homemade wine. He thought that was funny. Grandpa had a trick with his dog—he would place a bit of food on the dog’s nose and the dog would sit as still as a stone while Grandpa repeated the word, “Democrat.” But the moment Grandpa said “Republican!”, the dog jerked its head back and snatched the food out of the air, snap! I never figured out if the dog thought Democratic food was unsafe to eat, or if it was supposed to bite Republicans.

My mother says when she was growing up they were taught that you work hard and you play hard. It was their house that folks came to on Saturday nights to play music and dance. Maybe some of those tunes from long-ago breathe again in these new melodies. Maybe they’ll make your ears smile.

A dear trickster friend, Marie Smith Jones—last speaker of the Eyak language and honorary chief of the Eyak Indian Nation—died January 21, 2008 at the age of 89. Marie said she believed her language wouldn’t really go extinct when she passed away because “the language comes from the land, and as long as the land and water and animals are alive, the people will learn the language.”

This music is dedicated to the land and water and animals. In the Br’er Rabbit stories I read as a child it was said there was a time when all the creatures used to segashuate together, just like there ain’t been no fallin’ out, just like we all come from the same family connection. Them was the days when the creatures was in cahoots with ole Br’er Rabbit-—and we all went romancin’ round just like there ain’t been no hard times.