A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media

A Prairie Home Companion Camp-Song Songbook

You'll fine Muehlbach's comments throughout the Camp-Song Songbook, signed MM. -ed.

A Word from Our Web Camp Director
June, 1997

Mike leads a round
at Camp Knutson

The Camp Knutson camp-song cemetery
(click for a close-up view)

CAMP KNUTSON - Yes, such places do exist in Minnesota. As a director of Jeanette Holm Knutson Camp (i.e. Camp Knutson), I led many rousing songs after meals - interactive ones on rainy days, and those melancholy ones late at night around the campfire. It seems there are songs for just about any occasion at a camp, and placed between reveille and taps they can turn the day into a sort of Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

My personal favorites run the gamut from old rounds like Scotland's Burning to the morbid Titanic and the interactive Old McDonald Had a Zoo where each dinner table would act like a different animal.

After some ten years of song leading, I saw the need to retire a few of the songs so we sang them one last time and buried them complete with headstones and flowers. Michael Row Your Boat Ashore; Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and Cumbaya have probably been resurrected by camp directors since, but perhaps they have buried a few of their own tired tunes.

Camp songs still play an important part in my life and occasionally I'll break into song at the nursing home where I now work, singing about The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly and other appropriate tunes our residents know.

Keep singing!

—Mike Muehlbach (MM), Minneapolis, MN

P.S. Thank you all for submitting your songs. I hope it was as much fun for you as it was for me - remembering the old chestnuts as well as being introduced to some new ones or different verses of the same song.

Use your back button to return to your place in the songbook.
Camp-Song Songbook