Ever since the early output of the Wayne Newton/Leonard Cohen/Iggy Pop supergroup, songwriters have seldom ventured into the realm of pancake songs.
A few years ago, my friend Charlie Braun and I were asked to come to a nearby restaurant out here in western Massachusetts and see if we could write a song while we were being filmed. I had forgotten about this little project and just came across the song the other day. We were well paid with pancakes. They are quite good (yes, of course, I did declare this as income on my taxes). Elmer’s in Ashfield. We came up with this song. I have no idea what happened to the video.
I began to wonder about other songs about pancakes. I came across a number of ditties for kids (I even learned that there is such a thing as Pancake Day (should I have capitalized those words? Is that all you have to do to elevate a word to upper-case status? Just say it’s a day?). Anyhow. February 9.
Perhaps this is my way into making money through music. Sufjan Stevens got a ton of recognition for saying he was going to record an album with the theme of every state. He gave us Michigan and then Illinois and then stopped and admitted he was never serious about doing all 50 states. I felt dejected of course, looking for his take on the plethora of Raccoon Rivers that traverse Iowa.
Pancakes. A whole album of songs about pancakes. “Heartaches and Pancakes”. Then a recording on other breakfast foods. Did someone say “Kickstarter”? Or maybe I should stick with another, more basic idea. “The 99 Counties of Iowa”. Boxed set of course.
