I was exposed to Dan Reeder, a California blues/singer-songwriter type, through the Showtime show Weeds, which used his "Work Song" in a Season 1 episode. The song consists entirely of Reeder, harmonizing with himself, singing "I got all the fucking work I need," over and over again, for about two and a half minutes. There's some clapping as a beat, and that's it. It's amazing.
Turns out, I discovered after a bit of YouTube-sploration , Reeder has a kind of genuis for crafting these short, simple, often, occasionally poignant, very smart songs. Here, for instance, is "Cowboy Song," which is about both cowboy masturbation and male fantasy (the video's a fan creation, and not, unfortunately, very apt).
Here's "The Beer Song," which seems on the surface to be a kind of beer commercial-y type of thing, with the idea being that for all that makes men different from each other, we all like to drink beer. I think, in fact, though, that it's actually a critique of certain constricting ideas of masculinity.
Then there's "Food and Pussy." I couldn't find a link to it, but to give you an idea, it begins with the lyric: "What do you want? I want food and Pussy. How come? It's just the way God made me." Also, if you go to his MySpace site, you can hear "You'll never surf again," which sounds, from the title as though it's going to be a bit jokey but is actually a really lovely song about getting older (and never being able to surf again).
