WRITTEN BY Dan Reeder
PERFORMED BY Dan Reeder
APPEARS ON Dan Reeder (2004)
Little is known about Dan Reeder other than that he is an expatriate living in Germany and that he writes ribald, idiosyncratic songs performed with homemade instruments and equipment. John Prine happened to hear a demo tape of Reeder's first album and signed him to the Oh Boy! label.
A typical chain gang tune -- which Reeder appropriates here -- provided a rhythmic sense for convicts performing what amounted to slave labor, and also served as a vehicle for lyrics with hidden meanings about race and freedom. Reeder erases all of that and focuses on the work itself: Exhausting, meaningless, and unrewarding. Perhaps, one suspects, these are words that convicts might have sung if they could have gotten away with it.
"Work Song's" lyrics speak for themselves: One the one hand, a joke; one the other, a blunt expression of weariness with a dead-end job. They remind me of a story told about Teddy Kennedy when he first ran for the senate in 1962. Kennedy's opponents derided him as a rich kid (he was 30 at time) who had done nothing to merit his financial largesse. As Kennedy shook hands early one morning outside of a Massachusetts factory, a workingman approached him and said, "Ted, they tell me you've not worked a day in your life." The man paused, then went on: "You haven't missed a thing."
LYRICS
I got all, all the fuckin' work I need
I got all, all the fuckin' work I need
