Peter Alsop‘s SONGS TO CHEW

    Today’s “Song To Chew” is the KIDS PEACE SONG from my “Take Me With You!” album.  In order to have peace in the world, it helps to know how to have peace within ourselves.  We plant the seeds for finding non-violent resolutions to struggles in the world when we speak up for ourselves without feeling fearful or needy.  If someone attacks us, we can protect ourselves without having to crush them...

    Today’s “Song To Chew” is MEN ARE GOOD, written and performed by Joe Jencks.  When I first heard Joe sing this song, it blew me away!  I’d never heard a song that gave credit to the many, many wonderful things that ‘men’, (and boys), do on a daily basis all around the world.  This version is on my “Ebenezer’s Make Over” album, (which is an adaptation of Dickens “Christmas Carol”).  It’s full o...

    Today’s song is called HEY EV’RYBODY from my “Take Me With You” album.  It’s about how we learn to do something we want to do!  Things like walking, or whispering or snapping our fingers.  We just have to keep trying over and over again until we can do it!  And after we work so hard to learn it, we want to show everybody what we can do!  Of course, we’re a little clumsy at first, but we practi...

    I wrote this week’s “Song To Chew” to help parents who are at their wit’s end with how to manage their young children.  It's called LITTLE KID from my "Uh-Oh!" album.  Sometimes parents look into their toolbox and the only tool they see, left for them to use, is physical punishment.  Parents don’t want to use that tool.  They only hit their children when they truly don’t know what else to do. ...

    This week, our song is from my ‘Family Roles’ album, … TAKE A STEP.  One of the most difficult things for some of us to do when we want to get something accomplished, is to begin the journey.  When we see other people who have lots of accomplishments out there in the world, we often ‘measure ourselves’ by them.  We want to accomplish things too, but as soon as we start a project, we’re confron...

    It’s New Year’s Eve today.  Tomorrow is 2022.  So today we’ll 'chew on a song' I wrote about about ‘Time’.  As we change the calendar year, our vacations from work and school give each of us a chance to reflect on how we spent our time this last year.  Many of us will resolve to spend it differently in the next year!  So this song’s called MY LITTLE CLOCK, part of my ‘In The Hospital’ album pr...

    Hi there!  I'm Peter Alsop.  Glad you stopped by!  Today is Christmas Eve, so we’ve got a “Story to Chew” instead of a “Song to Chew”.  I wrote and recorded this holiday story about LITTLE TREE and put it on my “Chris Moose Holidays” album.  It’s about ‘being special’.  We know that each of us creatures living on the Earth have our very own story, and that’s what makes each of us special.  Som...

    For our “Songs To Chew” episode this week, we’ll listen to NEW GROUND, from my ‘In The Hospital’ album.  Our lives shift when a big loss happens.  Things go along smoothly, then BANG!, something occurs and our lives change drastically.  Our perceptions shift and we see things with ‘new eyes’.  A little girl in a wheel chair once told me that I was ‘T.A.B.’  I said, “What does ‘T.A.B.’ stand fo...

    It’s that time of the year again!  So today we’ll listen to the title cut from my "Chris Moose Holidays" album!  It’s for anyone who feels clumsy, and for people who like puns!  “Chris” is an irrepressible moose, excited just like a little kid about everything that goes on around him!  We all know folks like that!  Maybe you’re one of us!  I used to spill the milk at least once each meal!  I’m...

    Our ‘Song To Chew’ this week is called THE GIFT from my "Chris Moose Holidays" album.  It’s sung by my daughter Willow, from the point of view of a child who tells her Mom, “I don’t want any gifts from Santa this year, all I wants is for you to please quit smoking.”  I’ve had parents tell me that it helped them quit.  After one of my shows, a friend told me he sat behind a couple of Moms and t...

    Today's ‘Song To Chew’ is DADDY’S ROLL, from my “Chris Moose Holidays” album.  It’s written from the point of view of a child concerned about the health and well-being of their parents, specifically about compulsive eating!  Of course, there’s nothing wrong with ‘eating’, but sometimes we over-eat or drink because we feel sad or scared or angry, and eating comforts us and fills us up, so we do...

    Our Song To Chew this week, WHEN ONE IS TOO MANY, was inspired by the Alcoholics Anonymous saying, “one is too many, and a thousand ain’t enough!”  When we try to soothe our painful feelings, by using medicators like alcohol or other drugs, food or even compulsive behaviors we can become addicted and unable to stop.  We start on the path to recovery, when we understand that we NEED to feel pai...

    Today, we’ll listen to a song that’s a true story about Dan Murrow, a therapist who was fired for hugging his patients.  He was convinced that hugging between consenting adults was therapeutically helpful, contrary to the hospital’s policy.  It’s called THE HUG, and it was written by Fred Small, a wonderful singer-songwriter, old friend, activist and pastor dedicated to healing the earth, seek...

    When our ‘Song To Chew’ for this week was written 30 years ago, it would have been thought of as a song that only women would sing.  But more recently, with awareness growing about the limitations of our ‘either-or' binary thinking, especially in the arena of gender, sexual orientation and identification, it’s now a song that anyone can sing!  DON’T PUT YOUR HAND IN MY PANTS, JUST ‘CAUSE WE’RE...

    It’s October and in honor of Halloween, our ‘Song To Chew’ today will be COSTUME PARTY.  I’ve noticed scatterings of children, test-driving their Halloween costumes in super-market aisles, making sure they work!  Hidden inside their new identity, they are no longer just a ‘child in a supermarket’!  Every one of us wears a costume.  Each day, the clothing we put on when we get up, is our costum...

    This weeks’ Song To Chew’ is HEAL THE BAY from my ‘Pluggin’ Away’ album.  It’s an anthem, and a plea to all humans to help save this planet of ours.  If we want a clean, unpolluted non-toxic environment, we must first be able to imagine one.  When we throw something “away”, it doesn't really go “away”, it just goes somewhere else!  So it’s up to each of us to take care of our biosphere.  Even...

    Today’s ‘Song To Chew’ is the title cut from my GROW IT AT HOME album.  It’s about where we get our food.  I used to read food labels to see what chemical additives were in food before I bought it, and a friend suggested that I also check out where the food comes from. I was amazed at how far some of my food had traveled to get to me! And at how much extra money we were wasting by importing fo...

    Our ‘Song To Chew’ today is GOTTA LOTTA LIVIN' TO DO.  I wrote it in the late 80's when there were huge fears about contracting HIV from gay men.  Kids and families needed to understand that this deadly virus was not transmitted through the air, but mostly through physical contact, and kids could get it too.  I took my daughters Megan and Willow to sing with me at a California Men's Gathering,...

    This week’s ‘Song To Chew’ is “GO TO SLEEP YOU LITTLE CREEP!” from my 'Stayin' Over' album.  It chronicles one of our most universal human activities; bedtime for children.  Every evening, just after dinner, thousands of little kids all over the world turn magically into "little creeps", and most parents experience some perfectly normal parental irritation towards them!  We all act like creeps...

    This week’s ‘Song To Chew’ is a ‘scream-along’ written by Bill Steele about GARBAGE, from my very first live album 46 years ago!  Since then, we continue to produce excess packaging waste from our food and other commerce. And currently, some of our recycling efforts are  being abandoned because it’s become too expense to recycle our waste!  We scream about the air and the water, and the most p...

    Our SONG TO CHEW today is called 'WISH', about taking action when something needs to change.  It’s from my 'Grow It At Home' album.  Most of us feel concerned about the future of our world, with climate change, pandemics, storms, fires, wars, people arguing with each other, our lives seem to get more and more complicated every day!  It's very human of us, when we're upset, to wish things would...

    I don't usually write 'anthems', but today’s song from my ‘Chris Moose Holidays’ album is an anthem.  It’s called EARTHSONG.  There are billions of life forms and gorgeous features on our planet, and each one has a voice; the rivers and mountains, the animals and plants, all of which have a part in the delicate balance of nature that sustains us.  So really, EARTHSONG had to be an anthem!  And...

    I wrote today's 'Song To Chew' ATTA WAY T'GO BOY! back in the early 80’s for an anthology album called "Bullets And Guitars".  It was produced by Gary Cristall, who ran the Vancouver Folk Festival for years and includes songs by Si Kahn, Utah Phillips, Holly Near, Leon Rosselson and other talented progressive folksingers and activists.  My song’s a satirical 'pat on the back' to our President...

    Today's ‘Song to Chew’ is DEAR MR. PRESIDENT, from my 'Stayin' Over' album.  It's written by Bob Blue in the form of a letter written by a 2nd grader to the President of the United States about how he got in a fight with a friend over who had the biggest 'sticker collection'.  He thought the President might want to consider that fighting about 'having the most' isn't really worth it.  Kids con...

    BURNING TIMES is our 'Song To Chew' today, written and performed by Charlie Murphy, one of the strong clear voices of the early feminist men's movement.  It's about the plight of women in Europe in the Middle Ages, who were labeled as witches by establishment men who feared the influence they had as community organizers.  It's from my "Ebenezer's Make Over' album which is a story with songs by...