I grew up listening to comedy albums. I listened to them enough to have some comedian’s routines memorized. It would be hard to not be influenced by some of these routines even when they weren’t the most spiritual stories. Here are three songs that I can site direct influences from comedy routines.
Author Archives: elvisgumby
Writing A Cave in Bethlehem
For many of my songs, I try and go against the grain of normal thinking about familiar Bible Stories. The idea for A Cave in Bethlehem came from the fact that many of the stables in the region where Jesus was born were caves instead of the wooden structures we see in modern nativity scenes. I also …
Writing Speaking In Tongues
My pastor was preaching a sermon about Pentecost. He was discussing speaking in tongues. My mind tends to drift during some sermons and this was one of those times. I began thinking of how the concept of speaking in tongues is different in the story from Acts than it is in later parts of scripture …
Writing Crusin’ for a Brusin’ – The Jonah Songs
Several years ago, I wrote a song called The Belly of the Whale. It was based on the familiar story from the first three chapters of the book of Jonah. In the story, Jonah is called to preach to the people of Nineveh, he runs away from God, is swallow by a whale, is spit up …
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Writing Neighbor
My song Neighbor is based on the parable of the Good Samaritan. The song has 5 verses and each verse has its own melody. It works like a round. Each verse gives voice to a different person related to the parable.
Writing Mariam’s Song
Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.” -Exodus 15:21 This verse of scripture is identified at Mariam’s Song in most of my Bibles. The verses prior to it in Exodus 15 are identified as Moses Song. Moses Song is an account of crossing …
Writing Isaiah 11 – The Lion and the Lamb
I decided that I wanted to write a song about the Bible verse, “the lion will lie down with the lamb.” It turns out that this is one of those things everyone thinks is in the Bible but its not. The closest thing to this is in the eleventh chapter of the book of Isaiah. …
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Elvis Week 2018 – The Beginning of the End
I’m going to go with you to Elvis Week this year.” This is what my wife told me moments after I let her know that my jury duty wasn’t going to interfere with my annual trip to Elvis Week at Graceland. She had never expressed much interest in going on this trip until this year. …
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Public Flatulence
I don’t claim to be an expert on people’s habits of breaking wind. It’s not something that we talk about that often. Only family and the closest of friends usually discuss it. But as a rule, people don’t usually fart in public. We don’t even talk about it in a lot of situations. The scale …
Naked Pose at the Amusement Park
When my youngest daughter was little, she would run around with no clothes on after she got out of the shower. She would stand in the hallway upstairs outside of her room, raise one arm above her head and the other down by her side and shout “I’m Naked!” She didn’t do it all the …