| I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD
AND A CITY KID BUT I TREASURED THE FARM WHERE MY GRANDPA LIVED GOT TO SPEND A WEEK THAT SUMMER THERE WITH THE GRASS UNDERFOOT AND THE SMELL OF THE COUNTRY AIR BY THE POND ONE DAY THROWING ROCKS AT THE TREES WELL I SAW SOMETHING MOVE UNDERNEATH SOME LEAVES IT WAS THE FIRST REAL FROG I'D EVER SEEN BEFORE SO I GATHERED HIM UP IN A BOX WITH A LITTLE DOOR SO I COULD WATCH HIM SOME MORE (CHORUS) I SAID WO-WO-WO-WO-WO-WO-WO A FROG IN A BOX AND I WON'T LET HIM GO WO-WO-WO-WO-WO-WO-WO A FROG IN A BOX AND I WON'T LET HIM GO WELL I TOOK HIM HOME, KEPT HIM UNDER MY BED GAVE HIM WATER TO DRINK AND MADE SURE HE WAS FED BUT HE NEVER DID MUCH AND I DIDN'T KNOW WHY THERE WERE TIMES THAT HE SEEMED MORE DEAD THAN HE SEEMED ALIVE THEN A FRIEND ASKED WHAT WAS IN THE BOX ONE DAY WHEN I TOLD HIM A FROG, WELL HE WANTED TO PLAY HE CRIED LET'S GET HIM OUT, LET'S SEE IF HE HOPS BUT I TOLD HIM THE FROG HAD TO STAY IN THE LITTLE BOX (REPEAT CHORUS) WELL MY FRIEND LOOKED LIKE HE'D GONE INTO SHOCK HE SAID WHY HAVE YOU KEPT THE POOR FROG IN THE BOX HAVE YOU WATCHED HIM JUMP HAVE YOU SEEN HIM SWIM LET HIM OUT AND YOU'LL SEE ALL THE THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH HIM I SAID OH NO MY FROG CAN'T DO ANY OF THAT HE JUST SITS IN THE BOX EATING BUGS, GETTING FAT AND BEFORE I COULD SAY ANY MORE WELL MY FRIEND GRABBED THE BOX AND HE OPENED THE DOOR AND IT FELL TO THE FLOOR AND I COULDN'T IGNORE WHAT WAS HAPPENING BEFORE MY EYES-I WAS QUITE SURPRISED HE GOT OUTTA THAT BOX, HE GOT OUTTA THAT BOX HE GOT OUTTA THAT BOX AND STARTED HOPPING AROUND HE GOT OUTTA THAT BOX AND HE JUMPED UP AND DOWN HE GOT OUTTA THAT BOX AND HE SWAM AND HE CROAKED HE GOT OUTTA THAT BOX-HE EVEN DID THE BACKSTROKE HE GOT OUTTA THAT BOX, OOH OUTTA THAT BOX I KNEW THE FUSS COULDN'T BE GOOD FOR HIS HEALTH QUITE A MIRACLE HE DIDN'T HURT HIMSELF SO I STUCK HIM IN THE BOX BACK UNDER THE BED AND IN LESS THAN A WEEK WELL THE POOR LITTLE THING WAS DEAD HE MUST HAVE HIT HIS POOR LITTLE HEAD (REPEAT CHORUS) |
****SONGWRITING NOTES*****Is the correct spelling "wo" or "woh" or "woe" or "wough"?! Which is it?! Who knows?!? Who cares?!?! These earth-shaking decisions are made on the spur of the moment and can never be revoked. So for our purposes, "wo" is it. *This started out as a short story and just sorta turned into a song. None of it is true. I never even knew either one of my grandfathers, as they both passed away before I was born. I have no recollection of where the idea came from. Most of it was written by the pond at our previous home in Greenbrier, Tennessee. We saw lots of snapping turtles and snakes there but not too many frogs. Hmm...I think that sentence explains itself. *The best illustration of how this song affects different people in completely different ways would be when I received two letters from two different people within 2 weeks of each other. The first was from a program director at a Christian radio station in Georgia, I believe. He called the song a "joke" and wondered what in the world I was doing sending him such a piece of trash (Word did release it as a single) and to not send him any more of my music. The second came from a girl on the west coast who heard the song on one of the few stations that actually played it (only in the middle of the night, though--hahaha), saying that the song had turned her life around---that it showed her how she had kept God in a box but was ready to let Him do with her life whatever He wanted. *Probably the most memorable interpretation of the song came from a lady in California (!) who was convinced the song was written about her sister who just "hops from bed to bed". *I amassed quite a collection of frogs over the years following the release of the song, all given to me----toy frogs, stuffed frogs, ceramic frogs, pictures of frogs, an origami frog---even a dried and crunchy, scraped-off-the-highway roadkill frog (in a box, of course). Lovely. And one night in the middle of a concert while I was introducing the song, a young man walked right up on the stage and deposited a live tadpole (in a Kentucky Fried Chicken barrel) right on the piano. *If you listen to the song "Won by One" on the Silent Movies album, you'll hear some *mysterious* backward masking during the intro. It was my tongue-in-cheek version of backward masking, actually, as I always thought the controversy about it (in rock songs) was kind of dumb. Even if they did contain evil messages, the lyrics of most of those songs were just as evil forward, so what's the point? Anywho---it was more complicated to reverse a sound byte back then. We accomplished it by having my brother John speak the line, slowing it down a bit to make it more ominous, then the engineer sliced it from the reel of tape and spliced it back in reversed. The voice says "if you're looking for the frog, he's in another song". Referring, of course, to the frog in this song. Here's the original, followed by the clip reversed: |