Jim Novak Songwriter

There’s a fun bit of 20th Century political trivia associated with the 1963 hit song for Lesley Gore, “It’s My Party (and I’ll Cry If I Want To).”  In November, 1980, the freeform student radio station at the University of Michigan, WCBN-FM, played the song on its air continuously for 18 hours when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in the presidential election.

I’ve taken a different tack in my homage to the classic work by the songwriters Weiner, Gold and Gluck.  Here’s the link to my performing the song on ukelele: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkl6mwYBYJQ. My version says “I’ll LIE if I want to.”  

A number of news articles in 2018 were saying that the popularity of the “establishment /business Republicans” was fading — or had already faded — under the blazing fervor and fawning of Trump’s supporters in “the base.”  Those perceiving the GOP as HIS party were totally right, as far as I could tell.  Cue Lesley Gore.  Around the same time, fact-checkers at newspapers such as the Post and the Times were keeping track of the astonishing number of “false or misleading claims” the world was hearing from Trump. (Remember how reluctant they were back then to use the word “lies”?)  Cue Lesley Gore again, this time with “lie if I want to”, and there I was, off to the races, with a song in the first-person, following the lead of Weiner, Gold and Gluck.   

Here’s my lyrics as of early 2024.  I’ve dropped some of the lines from my versions of the song in 2018 and 2022 —about emoluments for example — because there’s been just so much going on!

MY PARTY (AND I’LL LIE IF I WANT TO)

(1963, by Wiener, Gold and Gluck; 

additional words by Jim Novak, 2018, 2022, 2024)

It’s my Party and  I’ll lie if I want to, lie if I want to, lie if I want to

You would lie too if you knew what I knew.

Nobody knows where the GOP’s gone, but Republicans get I’m the King

They wear my red MAGA hats, and kiss my ass and my ring.

GOP voters are solid for me, that’s where I get my clout

Elected Rep’s who don’t support me, I get their asses thrown out  (Bye, Lizzie!)

It’s my Party and  I’ll lie if I want to, lie if I want to, lie if I want to

You would lie too if you do what I do 

I flirt with Vlad Putin and Victor Orban, dictator talk is my style

Women, minor’ties, L-G-B-T,  give vermin an inch, they take a mile!

GOP rank-and-file, best get this straight: Russia’s our friend, not the Press,

White supremacists, go ‘head & hate: you domestic terrorists (“Fine People”)

It’s my Party and I’ll act like I want to, distract if I want to, change facts if I  want to,  You would lie too if you knew what I knew

I tot’ly mishandled the COVID response, I kept saying Things would be fine,

It worked for me to play it all down. A half-million dead:  my bottom line!

Impeach me once, and impeach me-ee twice, I got a legal bagful of tricks

I kick and scream all the way to the bank, & love the folks of JAN 6 (“You’re special”)

It’s my Party, I’ll collude if I want to talk crude if I want to, screw you if I want to,    You’d cover up too, if you knew what I knew.

Send-‘em-back racism, dog whistles too,  then I claim Whites are oppressed,

Evangelicals boy they love me:   My greed and adulteries are blessed!

Top Secret documents, who gives a shit? I keep a bunch in my garage

So unfair now to come after me,  but Fox News treats me like God (Or they used to)!

It’s my Party, I’ll lie if I want to, alibi if I want to, de-classify if I want to  

You would lie too if you do what I do.

“Resistance” is futile, my voters don’t care, I’m disruptive, unstable, bizarre,

“Unhinged” and orange, I swear, they tell me ‘We love how you are!’

I gave you judges to end Roe vee Wade, and a wall against immigrants;

Fake electors were all set to go, but we were betrayed by Mike Pence!! (That Pussy)

 It’s my Party and I’ll lie if I want to, deny if I want to, de-certify if I want to

You would lie too if you knew what I knew.  

91 felonies, 4 different courts, elections fraud, bus-ness fraud, theft

70 million voted for me, I claim what’s corrupt is the Left

It’s my Party and I’ll lie if I want to,  lie if I want to, lie if I want to

You would lie too if you knew what I   You would lie too if you screw what I   /     You would lie too if you do what I do.   

[SAMPLE OF A DELETED VERSE:

I punish my enemies, payback is sweet, and  emoluments were no prob,

Money laundering, shadowy deals,  I’m like the Boss of this Mob!]

YEAR IN REVIEW: 2023 at Songwriters Open Mic Ann Arbor

It’s the 29th year of Songwriters Open Mic, now that the month of February has rolled in.  And in Spring, we’ll hit 4 years on Zoom, as a weekly musical event.  During 2023,  40+ musicians  Zoom-ed in to Songwriters Open Mic from 14 states.  Around 40% of the 2023 performers are Michiganders, which reflects our long history there as an in-person event.  And if we add the Ohioans and Illini, it’s a little over 50%.  The 14 states from the past year are mapped out here in yellow.  

A core of 6 or 8 regulars welcomes “irregulars” and first-time visitors.  We leave time each week for discussion of songwriting technique, and some music history, and general encouragement. Our sets are 3 songs or 15 minutes, but if more than a dozen performers turn up, we limit our sets to 2 songs or ten minutes.  

The first Tuesday evening of the the month is for original songs only; the other Tuesdays are “anything goes” (covers or originals).   As always, this year’s original songs covered a wide scope.  Love songs. Topical or political observations.  Nature settings.  Family stories.  Exotic travels.  Everyday reporting.

The covers were acoustic but all over the place, from The Folk Revival to Sixties Rock and Pop, and on to recent decades of Americana and Indie songwriters.  Some of the singer-songwriters whose names frequently came up in 2023 were John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot, Guy Clark, Jason Isbell, Bob Dylan.  

As I recall,  it was a bigger-than-usual year for songs played in alternate tunings.  And for ukuleles!  You never know, on any given Tuesday, what songs you’ll hear and what musical topics will arise.  

There is a video archive of hundreds of original songs from the open mic (both the in-person years and the Zoom years).  Search YouTube for the channel called “Songwriters Open Mic Ann Arbor.”

The Zoom link for Songwriters Open Mic changes each week.  If you want the link, either to perform your set and talk about songs, or to just listen in, write to at jimnovakmusic (at) gmail (dot) com.  

At the Anything Goes open mic on September 26, I marked the 249th anniversary of the birth of John Chapman — who planted thousands of apples trees from seed in the late 18th and early 19th Century in the Ohio River Valley — by playing 3 songs from my solo musical theater project, “Crossing Paths with Johnny Appleseed.”  Chapman/ Appleseed was a much loved figure in his day, though regarded as more than a little bit eccentric for his passion for planting apple seeds and never grafting the trees, which meant that his apples were small and sour, much like what we think of as crab apples.  But he was celebrated as a good and resourceful man, and folks called him Apple John.  The pioneer settlers in Ohio and Indiana went ahead and did the grafting themselves,  and had apples for cider, including hard cider, and for vinegar, which had uses in cooking and cleaning and medicine.  Chapman created a large number of small orchards at locations along rivers where he cannily suspected that settlers would soon be arriving, and would find his apple tree seedlings useful as they built their new homesteads.  Overall, Chapman was a savvy fellow about three things:  the cultural, the commercial and the ecological.  

For that evening’s open mic, I selected three songs from my collection of originals written for the Appleseed project:  “Apple John,” which opens the show and establishes the largely positive feelings that people have for him and his “peculiar” ways; “Pearl Inside the Shell,” which invents a romantic relationship for him; and “Not Over Yet,” which is one of the songs in the show emphasizing the social and political climate of his time, that is, the first generation born after the Declaration of Independence.  Back then, they were just figuring out their identity as Americans, and facing up to some of the same dilemmas and conflicts about “democracy” that we still  grapple with today.

Video of the three Johnny Appleseed songs from Sept 26, on YouTube:  

Audio of the entire Appleseed project in a version recorded in 2020, on Bandcamp:

https://jimnovak.bandcamp.com/album/crossing-paths-with-johnny-appleseed

For INFO on participating in Songwriters Open Mic as a performer or audience member, write JimNovakMusic(at)gmail(dot)com, and you’ll receive the Zoom link (it changes each week).  

SONGWRITERS OPEN MIC started as a monthly event in Ann Arbor in 1996, and since 2020 has evolved into a weekly event on Zoom, involving a small group of regulars and occasional visits from songwriters joining in from a couple dozen states and several countries.  Songwriters receive an mp4 video of the entire evening of songs and conversation.

An archive of over 200 half-hour, lightly edited excerpts of past sessions of Songwriters Open Mic, featuring songwriters from New York to Califfornia, and the UK, Canada and Australia,  is at https://www.youtube.com/@songwritersopenmicannarbor7761/videos

At a Showcase for VOCAL (“Virginia Organization of Composers and Lyricists”) in March, 2023, there was enough time for 5 songs, several with connections to Michigan, and one from the current project, my set of songs and narratives about the 19th Century American environmentalist and folk hero John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed.  A link to the VOCAL Showcase performance is here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJfTUd2zWRs — and the 5 song titles plus a log of the  approximate starting times are here:

Blue Star in the Window (42:00)

Mastodon Conversation (46:00)

First Class View (52:00)

Maple Sugar Snow (58:00)

River Nearby (1:03:00)

The Virginia Organization of Composers and Lyricists is a not-for-profit serving all of Virginia and headquartered in Richmond.  https://vocalsongwriter.org/

Also performing in the March 2023 VOCAL Showcase were Matthew Costello,  https://costello-music.com/  and Burke Ingraffia, https://burkeingraffia.com/, which made for a wonderful evening of original music.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJfTUd2zWRs