All My Friends Are Funeral Singers

Singing to mourn and remember and comfort and...

Post title borrowed from this great song by Califone. (Which has also been beautifully covered by Sylvan Esso.)

All my friends are weeds and rain
All my friends are half-gone birds,
Are magnets
All my friends are words
All my friends are funeral singers, wailing

---

Life is phases.

Being in school, that’s a phase. Then, for awhile, you’re going to graduations. And then, for Mormon kids, it’s farewells and homecomings for LDS missionaries coming and going. Then weddings and bridal showers. Baby blessings and kid birthday parties. Baptisms.

You might sprinkle a funeral in here and there. But, luckily, the funerals are mostly just an accent to the rest of everything that’s happening. It’s not a phase. Yet.

My first funeral of note was probably my Grandma Rosebud, who died in a car wreck when I was in 8th grade. It was a shock to my system, trying to process how this one source of unconditional love was just….no longer there.

I grappled with that concept then. I grapple still.

After that? Probably about 5 years later, when my Grandpa Garff passed, finally released from years of post-stroke suffering. I was 19. I wouldn’t say we celebrated his passing, but we were relieved. Happy for him and for my grandma, who’d been loyally by his deteriorating side the whole way.

My Uncle Mark and Grandpa Jacobsen died while I was serving as a missionary in São Paulo Brazil the next two years.

Later, I remember going to the funeral for a girl I knew, who was three years younger than me and was in a head-on collision. That was my early 20s.

Then it was quiet. A dot here and there. The phase was still college and weddings, seeping into first kids.

It’s not quiet anymore. As you likely know, if you’ve read this Substack or met me in person, my brother Ben (his 50th birthday would’ve been yesterday) died of cancer in 2010 and my friend/drummer Pat died suddenly in 2020 and then my father-in-law died just a month or so ago. In between there have been more—neighbors from growing up, neighbors from now, friends, peers, coworkers—than I’d wish. And, uh, just mathematically and biologically speaking, I don’t think life and age trend away from funerals as you get older.

In the vernacular of Taylor Swift, it appears that I’m in my Funeral Era.

---

One unanticipated development has been that I’m sometimes asked to sing at funerals. And, weirder (flattering but still a little jarring), I’ve been asked by the living to sing at their funerals once they die (flattering, again, that they believe I might outlive them given my fitness level). My cousin Ben and I grabbed dinner before going to a concert¹ a year or two ago, and he asked me to sing a Warren Zevon tune that I’m sure I won’t get through in one piece, “Keep Me In Your Heart.” After singing at my father-in-law’s funeral, I had two requests (in the cemetery!) to sing at funerals: one for the same song I’d just sung (Homeward Bound²) and one for Amazing Grace.

I don’t say this to brag. Weird thing to brag about anyway. Just that it’s a wildly unexpected thing.

Yesterday I sang at my brother-in-law’s best friend’s dad’s funeral. (The connection sounds far more convoluted than it is. I have known the best friend for decades. We took our kids trick or treating together one year.)

Anyway, they asked me to sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” which is a tall order and complicated for me for a few reasons that I’ll leave in the footnotes³. But obviously, within reason⁴, I’ll sing whatever feels good to the family. It’s a relatively simple kindness and grace I can offer to family in mourning, to sing some song that was/is meaningful.

And Cohen writes some killers, “Hallelujah” certainly being one of them, so I was all in.

---

“How does an average guy like me become the number one lover-man in his particular postal district? He's grumpy, he's broke, he hangs out with the musical moron twins...”

That’s the question protagonist/anti-hero Rob asks himself in the book (and movie) High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.

”How does an average guy like me suddenly become The Guy Who Sings At Funerals in his particular postal district?”

That’s the question I have asked myself. I don’t have an answer. Maybe it’s just my general willingness, I don’t know.

It’s made me ask the same question that Rob’s coworker (one of the “musical moron twins”) Barry asks when they find out Rob’s ex-girlfriend’s father died: what song do you want played at your funeral?

Jack Black was the perfect Barry.

Wait. I was wrong. I thought Barry asked about what song you’d want played at your funeral. He did not. I just looked it up and Barry, in true record store employee fashion, started a tangentially related discussion about Top Five Songs About Death⁵.

It’s actually Rob who, while sitting at the man’s funeral in a Ferris Bueller Breaks The Fourth Wall way, considers which songs he wants at his funeral. I’ll just quote him directly now:

“Songs at my funeral? ‘Many Rivers To Cross’ by Jimmy Cliff, ‘Angel’ by Aretha Franklin, and I've always had this fantasy that some beautiful, tearful woman will insist on ‘You're The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me’ by Gladys Knight. - But who would that woman be?”

In the past handful of years, here’s a noncomprehensive list of songs I’ve sung at funerals:

Plenty of hymns/spirituals:
Never Grow Old
Where The Soul of Man Never Dies
Lead, Kindly Light
Abide With Me

But also some other stuff:
Homeward Bound⁶
Crazy Love by Van Morrison
Just Breathe by Pearl Jam (via Willie Nelson, with Grateful Dead tunes as prelude)
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
Blackbird by The Beatles (which I totally choked on, just to be totally transparent)

As for me?

For a handful of years, I thought maybe Ryan Tanner’s “Peaceful Mind.” Great song.

The more I think about it, though, I think, for my funeral, I wanna make my friends do one last mixtape concert, play me out like a New Orleans second line thing. That way I get to pick more songs⁷. And get to coerce, from the grave, my friends into doing one more big deal.

What would your song (or songs) be?

1. Primus playing the Rush album A Farewell To Kings all the way through, which was just as strange and interesting as it sounds.

2. Not the Simon & Garfunkel one.

3. Reason 1: Once a song has been covered definitively and by “definitively” I mean eclipsing or near-eclipsing the original (Jeff Buckley doing “Hallelujah” in this case), it seems like most covers are just lesser clones of that cover and, thus, pretty unnecessary. Sometimes someone will crack it with a new angle (k.d. lang has a version that feels like its own world, rather than Buckley 2.0), but typically it feels like the old Tenacious D song: “This is not the greatest song in the world. This is a tribute to the greatest song in the world” but with one more added level “This is a tribute to a tribute to the greatest song in the world.” The world doesn’t really need another version of “Hallelujah.” Or at least it doesn’t need mine.
Reason 2: Surprise! I don’t sing like Jeff Buckley. I don’t need to remind people about that while I sing. Because that’s what happens: people go, “Oh this is fine but he’s no Jeff Buckley.” Involuntarily!
Reason 3: Before my unreasonable stance about Not Covering Hallelujah Because The World Doesn’t Need It, I actually did cover Hallelujah. I had a show at the old Muse Music in Provo. I was in college. I wanted to show how well-read (or whatever the music taste version of well-read is) I was via playing a Leonard Cohen song (not realizing that it was not really showing off to play the most popular song by a revered songwriter, but ok). So I decide to play “Hallelujah” without having really rehearsed it. Sure, I had sung it in the privacy of my room at some point. But I hadn’t really practiced it, per se. So I introduce the song and jump in and—about 5 chords in, maybe less—I just fumble. And fumble hard. I don’t really recover. To the point where I actually just stop the song and apologize. And not the charming version. The cringey version where everyone in the room feels terrible. Until today, I hadn’t played the song in public ever again. You can bet I had the chords clearly outlined above the lyrics today.
Reason 4: Cohen is alleged to have written 80 verses for “Hallelujah.” So, while the Buckley version (which Buckley learned from a John Cale cover, which Cale had pulled from a live album) is essentially canon at this point, the original Cohen version has different verses. And! Cohen was known to swap verses in and out over the years, as he wished. The “canon” version though is pretty, uh, sexy. Which isn’t bad necessarily. The sex is implied, for sure. It’s not explicit—no body parts or slang verbs are used, I guess? But the idea of singing the sexy verses at a funeral felt…weird. So we opted for some of the others.

4. I will not sing any Train song at your funeral. A man must have principles.

5. BARRY: Hey, top five songs about death. A Laura's dad tribute list. Okay?

DICK: Okay.

BARRY: “Leader Of The Pack.” The guy (expletive) beefs it on his motorcycle and dies, right? “Dead Man's Curve.” Jan and Dean.

DICK: Do you know that right after they recorded that song, Jan himself crashed his... -

BARRY: It was Dean, you (expletive) idiot.

DICK: It was Jan. - It was a long time after the song...

BARRY: Okay, whatever. “Tell Laura I Love Her.” That would bring the house down. Laura's mom could sing it. You know what I'd want? “One Step Beyond” by Madness. And “You Can't Always Get What You Want.”

DICK: Immediate disqualification because of its involvement with The Big Chill.

BARRY: Oh, you’re right!

DICK: “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” Gordon Lightfoot.

BARRY: You (expletive)! That's so good… that should have been mine...(sings) The night Laura's daddy died. Sha na na na na na na na na! Brother what a night it really was. Mother what a night it really... angina's tough! Glory be!

6. Still not the Simon & Garfunkel one.

7. This is not definitive, but, just spitballing first-takes, I do think this would make for one pretty amazing show:

Bill Withers’ Lean On Me sung by Ryan Innes
Tom Waits’ Take It With Me sung by Debra Fotheringham
Big Thief’s Mary sung by Sarah Sample
Father John Misty’s Every Man Needs A Companion sung by Dominic Moore
M Ward’s To Go Home sung by Cory Mon
George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass sung by Stuart Wheeler
Pete Yorn’s Strange Condition sung by Marcus Bently
Ben Kweller’s Penny On A Train Track sung by Brady Parks
Probably a Soundgarden song sung by Stu Maxfield
Indigo Girls’ Prince of Darkness sung by Cherie Call
Tom Petty’s Southern Accents sung by Dustin Christensen
Bread’s Everything I Own sung by Ryan Tanner
Whatever Gillian Welch song Marie Bradshaw wants to sing
Wilco’s Impossible Germany sung (and played) by Robbie Connolly
Queens of the Stone Age’s My God Is The Sun sung by Mark Owens
Whatever Counting Crows song off the first two albums that Nate Pyfer feels like singing
Sunfall Festival’s What It Feels Like sung by Amy Gileadi (though she could also pick a Bjork song and it would be just fine)
Beach Boys’ God Only Knows sung by Adam & Darcie
Grant Lee Buffalo’s Mockingbirds sung by Jamen Brooks
Milk Carton Kids’ Memphis sung by Peter Breinholt
Nick Drake’s Place To Be sung by Libbie Linton
Gabriel Kahane’s Little Love sung by Jordan Moyes
Justin Townes Earle’s Harlem River Blues sung by Mark Smith
Grateful Dead’s Ship of Fools sung by Kiki Jane Sieger
Jonatha Brooke’s Because I Told You So by Stephanie Mabey
The Cars’ Drive sung by Michael Gross
The Samples’ Little Silver Ring sung by Adam Romney
The Jayhawks’ Blue sung by Joshua James
Phoebe Bridgers’ Sidelines sung by Mia Grace
Nanci Griffith’s I Wish It Would Rain sung by Eric & Alex Peterson
Whatever John Prine song Dan Buehner feels like does the trick
Anais Mitchell’s Now You Know sung by Mindy Gledhill (though she can also pick a Cardigans’ song, as long as it’s from Long Gone Before Daylight)
The Kinks’ Strangers sung by Jay William Henderson
Madison Cunningham’s Life According To Rachael sung by Edie Carey
Peter Gabriel’s Washing of the Water sung by Scott Shepard
Leona Naess’ Ballerina sung by Mai Bloomfield
A Neil Young song sung by Neil Young, of course

And then you all can do a singalong or swap verses for a U2 song, a Beatles song,
a Low song, and a Radiohead song.