Where do I start ? My mother and I would ride to school together in my small hometown, population less than 3500. It was a private school started in 1969, after segregation. She was an English teacher and she loved limericks. She would also write poems which usually had a comic element about a particular situation that had occurred.

In the fourth grade we were given an assignment to go home and write a poem that would have to be recited in front of the class of around 25 students. This is the poem I wrote about streaking, a recent fad. Ray Stevens had a popular song at the time called , “the Streak”.

I stood in front of the class and read my poem.



“Streaking can be lots of fun,

Just take off your clothes and start to run,

Fun with one, but better with two,

Come on Miss Perrow, I’ll streak with you.”



She took me to the office. I was scared to death until she made me recite it again, for the office staff and headmaster. Then to the fifth grade, sixth grade , etc. I never focused on my basic studies again, a comedian was born.

My small school didn’t have a band or I believe I probably would have pursued music earlier in my life. My 11 year older brother was purchased a Ringo Starr Ludwig drum set, which I was told not to touch, because it was not a toy. It was an official musical instrument, as if you weren’t meant to beat on it with sticks. Of course, they knew my licks would probably stray from the skins, and onto the wooden parts, which were pristine.

I did my best to obey, but couldn’t resist the urge to try a few bangs here and there.

My sister dated a drummer, who would come to pick her up for dates. She wouldn’t be ready, putting the finishing touches on her hair and face. He said, get the snare and the hi hat and I will show you how to get started. We put on a simple Doobie Brothers song and in no time, I could keep time. We gradually added the kick, and toms and then the ride and crash symbols.

I loved the Jackson Five and was constantly fantasizing that I was Micheal in front of an audience. It was a great hobby to put on records and play along in my spare time. Organized sports took precedence over all my free time other than school and church, eating or sleeping. There was some working around my Dad’s service station and the farm.

I continued focusing on sports throughout my grammar and upper school until I graduated in 1982. Off to college to play second base for a small college and then final to the University of South Carolina. I always listened to music on the radio and on vinyl and had a pretty nice stereo, turntable, and speakers with a cassette deck to boot.

A guy from Philly turned me on to Todd Rundgren. After making a trip to see Todd in a bar called Toad’s Place, near Yale, in Connecticut, I had to buy a guitar and start learning how to play. I took voice, piano, and guitar lessons and bought books on theory from the music section of the college bookstore. After learning a few chords, I guess somehow the funny poem writing and song writing ambition converged.

I started asking anyone, who’s playing I admired, to show me some exercises to help me advance my musicianship faster. We had a piano in my house growing up, but I had only played chopsticks and a few other simple songs my sister had shown me.

So with guitar, and lessons , piano, and lessons, voice and lessons, I guess the next logical step was to make something up original.

My cousin who was a Jerry Lee Lewis fan showed me how he stole Jerry”s left hand bass pattern from a concert he witnessed from a very close point of view. I practiced this over and over. So Spoiled Rotten, is written in this same fashion.This was my first piano song.

Around the same time, my friend Mark happened to be turning 25 and wanted me to host a birthday party for him. I thought, what can I give him for his birthday, and so I decided to try and write him a song.. I liked Todd’s song Zen Archer. I was fooling around with these minor chords and a Roland drum machine. These are things Mark might say or do.

The next song , Shakey Joe, was written about a wine drinking stall mucker, who was always wanting to borrow loose change to get to the total figure of the price of night train wine, the cheapest you could buy. He smoked Newport cigarettes and helped me with countless after work chores. I loved him dearly. I bought his headstone and went with the undertaker to pick his body up from the airport. He was killed near the racetrack in New Jersey. His personal effects were a penny, a key, and a cigarette lighter. I cried like a baby at his funeral. Sometimes I run into his sister or brother and we talk about Joe and all the wonderful memories he bestowed on us. He excelled at weed eating and he and I picked up lumber that was way too heavy for two men to be attempting to carry.

My next song Layfayette Ranch, was written about Tommy Carroll a fellow exercise rider on a thoroughbred racehorse farm. I was the farm manager, and Tommy was a heavy beer drinker from New Jersey who was going to spend the winter in South Carolina. He called his wife the Queen, and would make periodic phone calls to her and we would discuss his current state of affairs while we rode 3 miles around a track on 10 to 15 horses a piece.

Coon Dog Shuffle was written shortly after a coon hunting trip. My friend John had taken clogging classes at Clemson. He told me when he heard a coon dog hot on the trail of a coon, it sounded like music to him, and it made him want to move his feet. Around this time I had just bought a Roland digital piano like Todd played in Fairmont Park.

After attending Graduate School and attending for two semesters , I was 25 years old, and decided I wanted to marry Cheryl, move to Orlando and attend Full Sail. I still had this fantasy to become a record producer like Todd. When older gentlemen around town found out I was engaged, they would shove advice down my throat about how much I would end up regretting getting married. I was exited and looking forward to it. My guitar teacher started teaching me some jazz chords and I had grown tired of common bar chords. So, I wrote When You Fall In Love about getting married to Cheryl.

My first guitar song came shortly after, while sitting in my girlfriends apartment ,playing my first Ovation guitar, I decided to write about my other close farming friend, Dargan. It’s very simple, but I liked the first few chords I was learning on guitar. His father was diagnosed with alzheimer’s and he was taking over his family’s farm.

Got this passion was an attempt to play like blues musicians I had seen and admired over the years. It is written because of the stress and strain one goes through learning musicianship and whether or not to keep trying or give up and live a normal life, whatever that is.

After finishing Full Sail and working on two movies at Universal in Orlando, Cheryl and I moved to LA. One day while working at the Record Plant in West Hollywood with Guns and Roses, I asked Slash how it was going. He replied, “it’s just another shitty day in paradise”. I was struggling with the concrete jungle, a bit homesick, and my mind was blown with all the homeless, smog etc. Ironically, I missed LA when I left, and I have returned many times, so it crawled into my heart somehow. I really enjoyed fulfilling one of the items on my bucket list and couldn’t be happier about recording my songs with Fernando and Trace in North Hollywood. So it’s funny how things can turn around 180 degrees over a a 30 year period.

Funky Groove was written to prove to my kids that I could write a rap song. It has a red hot chili peppers feel.

I came back home, started a family, had two sons, built a chicken farm and still I kept on playing music off and on in different low key situations. My neighbors had sued me, to try an stop me from building the farm, but I wanted to raise my kids up on the farm. It was postponed 2.5 years and finally when I finished growing my first flock of chickens, I was so elated, that upon looking at one of 180,000 chickens who had no idea what was about to happen in their near future, I wrote the chicken song in about 10 minutes. I guess stress has a way a bringing out the best in me, this is definitely one of my most popular songs.

I met Fred, because his daughter and my son were in the same class at school, He found out about my musicianship and had me come over and entertain his friends on several occasions. He had a condo in Georgetown and had connections to book me and the band, which he had promptly named, “Dode Prickett and the Peckers”. We were scheduled to play the Big Tuna , a historic restaurant on Saturday night. It would be the grand finally of the wooden ships festival, where they close off the streets downtown. I told him I should wait until Saturday to come down, but he insisted I come Friday, a day early. I knew I wouldn’t be able to behave and would be hungover on Saturday night of the gig. After partying too much on Friday, I woke up Saturday morning and wrote the Fred song.

Harrison’s song was written for my son Harrison when his mother was worried he and his friends were going down the wrong path in life. I like Todd’s song “Past” and I tried to emulate that type of mood or lament.

My Todd fan saga started in 2011, when I met Kurt and CLB in upstate New York at Full Moon. I met many others and thought I would never see them again. Low and behold they had it again at the same place in 2012. I wanted to thank Todd for inspiring me to play music and so I wrote the Camp Song to try and express what I thought the fans and mainly myself felt like after attending this type of event.

During this same timeframe we took two buses on a winery tour. We sat on sunny hillside vineyards with the Pacific Ocean in plain sight “tasting” wine, eating lunch, and admiring the scenery. Later that evening, back at camp I was telling Gary about a pretty Filipina girl who was my waitress. I told him I was so tempted to go back out to the winery. He proceeded to tell me, “ Dode, don’t go back to the winery, you’ve already tasted all their wine. He said, “There’s a song for you, write a song,” “don’t go back to the winery” . This also took months to finish, it is written in a Rolling Stones “Wild Horses” mindset. I love Gary. He liked one of my jokes about crossing an elephant and a rhino, “Elephino” He sent me a t- shirt through the mail, although to small to fit my beer belly, my oldest son loved it and wore it religiously.

My Wife Ain’t My Friend On Facebook was written to try and use a current social media “craze” and combine it with a country flair in the Merle Haggard songwriting style. Sometime around the big Akron weekend on Labor Day.

Soon after being hooked up via Facebook to more and more Toddfans, I was invited to participate in Tikiiniki. We all eagerly anticipated the completion by Bamboo Ben, a famous bar designer whose Dad had built the Tiki room at Disney. I was able to correspond with him through Facebook before ever getting to Kauii, I couldn’t wait to meet him in person and admire his craftsmanship with bamboo. It took a good while to find him. After meeting him, and being in a great mood, like a second honeymoon, I decided to try to write a reggae song. These lyrics describe my week in Hawaii, and the people, events and escapades in my party.

Hairspray and Wine was written about my Dad’s 93 year old lady friend in Atlanta. I took him to see her one afternoon while were in town for the worldwide chicken convention. I asked her what the secret was to living so long, to which she replied, “hairspray and wine”. It took about 15 minutes, because I was driving, to jot down the main things she said,— that phrase struck me as hilarious.

While in Florida at a Todd concert, my wife called with the horrible news that a storm had knocked out the power to the chicken farm and 10’s of thousands of chickens were dead. It was “THE” most horrible thing I and many others have ever seen, as far as chickens are concerned, I am sure there are much worse things to witness, but nevertheless, it was something I won’t soon forget. Fast forward, the insurance company denied my claim for loss of income. I learned over time I would need the help of my lawyer cousin. He assured me everything will be ok, and instructed me to go home and write a song about it. Well, again in short order, the insurance song was born. It’s really easy when every other commercial on TV is for an insurance company. They gave me most of the money they promised and about 10K more, after my cousin sent the forensic accountant the song in an email. I guess you could call it “hush money”

There’s A Storm Outside is about being depressed from losing the chickens, my Dad going through radiation and chemo, and losing so many people and freedoms to Covid19.

It’s A Tesla was written in NOHO Hotel about my first Tesla ride. I was blown away by how quiet and powerful it was. It was about an afternoon Uber ride to Hollywood Blvd., to the Laugh Factory for Chocolate Sunday.

I so love Joe and his wife Ellise. I took a childhood friend with me on a multi-Toddshow extravaganza. On the way up, I tried to debrief him on the various cast of characters we would probably run into. I proceeded to tell him about this man from Detroit, who is always outside, around a corner, smoking and checking out the comings and goings of all who enter or exit the hotel. I told him his name is Joe, and he is a Vietnam Veteran. He has stars on his hat and he always has it on. I told my friend Ken, he must be some kind of General. Well, needless to say, Ken and I met Joe in Cincinnati, and again in Chicago, at the House of Blues. He told us a story of how he had gone 2 hours down the interstate in the wrong direction, because Ellise was on the phone and not using the GPS. Well, from that point on, Ken and I were madly in love with Joe. Finally, in Boston, in the hotel , we figured out that what Joe does is -recon. We told him we have a new name for you, it’s “Recon Joe”. He says, “ That’s what I did in the Army, —recon”, well, now it made perfect sense. Ken and I just dumped adulation and respect on Joe every time we bumped into each other. He said, “you need to tell my wife how great I am, you guys realize it, but she needs to hear it from somebody else.” Bam, I told Ken, “I’ve got my next song”. I wrote this song to hopefully immortalize Joe for his service to our country. He is also such a dedicated Todd fan. This song also proved very illusive. Trying to describe all of Joe’s attributes and yet still maintaining a tough, strong, Clint Eastwood persona, tied into his service to our country and also what that must have felt like. All I know is what I have seen in movies and documentaries. I am eternally grateful for all serviceman and Veterans. I have no military experience. All I can do is try and imagine what it must have been like. Joe is a wonderful person, payed his dues, and deserves all the freedom and respect he secured for us. I will try to honor him for his service with the patriotism he indirectly makes me feel.

Before we went out to Cambria for another Todd camp, Ed asked me to try and write a song about Todd’s Spirit of Harmony Foundation. I wanted to try to do a mashup style song, so I thought ,”Just One Victory” would be a good choice, given the focus of the foundation. It took way longer than 10 minutes. I am definitely not as good when commissioned to create something as I am when the muse strikes me all on it’s own.

Many thanks to Fernando, and Trace for helping me complete this project. We had a blast together.



DODE