This is another song I wrote last year (2025) and the fourth song on the album-in-progress with the working title “It IS Good To Be Here” (the second to directly address my fairly spectacular MVA on March 10^th, 2024.) More specifically, the song references the hospital bill (paid mostly by my insurance) resulting from my care in the ICU and PostOp ward prior to being released. Intended as a relatively straightforward bluegrass tune, I was honored to have two very special friends and spectacular musicians add their performances to this recording. Pat Stevens is my banjo mentor and one of the nicest people I have had the good fortune to encounter. David Beede is a mentor of another kind. A prolific and gifted songwriter, David is a polymath (https://www.davidbeede.com/). An accomplished multi-instrumentalist, luthier, carpenter, boatwright and teacher of all things musical, David contributes the mountain dulcimer (as a matter of fact, he is playing his signature instrument developed in cooperation with McCafferty Dulcimers and available for order through their site https://www.mccaffertydulcimers.com/the-beede-signature). Needless to say with these two friends contributing, the project ballooned into multiple tracks, takes and solos because I wanted to use as much of their respective performances as possible (I’m greedy that way). I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed producing it.

 [VERSE 1]
Say who, is this hulking opposite of tan
Pasty, bald dude—guitar in hand?
A solo cat without any band.

[CH]
I’m a half-a-million-dollar man.

[VERSE 2]
Not just any Steely Dan fan,
I’m also kinda in to England Dan,
But I never had much use for Ayn Rand.

[CH]

[VERSE 3]
I’m a poster child for the ACA plan
Bolted together and returned to my clan.
I cost over 200 Krugerrand.

[CH]

[VERSE 4]
Don’t drive your SAAB as fast you as can
My car took me straight to a CAT scan.
But, I’ve since regained the use of every limb and every gland.

[CH]

[VERSE 5]
Out of the fire, into the shit-can
It was 28 days before I could stand
Not exactly what I had planned

[CH]

[VERSE 6]
So take your meds and eat all your bran.
Balance the yin, Balance the yang.
Try and be something other than

[CH]