Beantown Podcast - Top 10 Campfire Songs (07172026 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Quinn comes to you LIVE to discuss Oscar-winning Irish actresses, cockroaches, and decals (yes I already forgot what's it short for and I'm not looking it up again) Listen to the YouTube playlist HERE: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaStA-RN962E&si=CMxVF7QIfhw5fDVh

Hey, what's going on? What's happening? How are you? My name is Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for Friday, July 17th, 2026. What's happening? What's going on? How are you? My name is Quinn David Furness and I am the creator, host, and chief survivalist of this program. It's smoky out. It's fiery. It's smoky. we're going to be talking campfire songs a little bit later on power ranking top 10 songs to strum along and play around a campfire in honor of the great smoke and flames and you know generally poor air quality come down here from Ontario I've heard you know a QI right that's the big the number of the index the air quality index I heard someone say the other day it was 150 and that was bad. Someone else said it was 300 and that was really bad. Someone else said it was over a thousand and that was bad. So I don't really know how the AQI scale works but pretty much any number you could throw out there. You could tell me oh man the AQI is up to a 2.7

today and I would be oh shoot that's bad. Who knows? I'm listening or not been listening but I listen to a daily podcast occasionally here from Dan Bernstein, Chicago Radio Sports Legend, and they were breaking down some MLB stats today. And I'm not too stuck up to admit that I don't understand every one of these advanced stats that they got. Not to sound like an old head, but when I was a kid uninformed and lesser knowledgeable, I placed a lot of value and batting average and on-base percentage and RBIs and runs scored and home runs. And while those stats still exists, you know, I absolutely got more advanced ways of measuring success and talent.

Like pitchers, you're not looking at their wins anymore. You're looking at their whips, walks, plus hits per inning pitched. Big one is wins above replacement war. There's another one too that is like, oh, my matter. I can't remember what it is now, but it's a batting statistic. Or maybe it's just a general player statistic. I don't know, but it was one they kept referencing on the podcast. I was listening to today, and I was just like, man, I love the game.

I love baseball, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I have no idea what this stat actually is. I'll leave it up to the experts. You know what? I'm not going to feel bad about that. I like sports. I follow sports, but it's not my career. It's not my profession, whereas it is for these guys. Okay.

You want to talk to me about time to fill rates here in human resources? I got you. I can do those calculations for you. But we'll let the baseball experts figure wars and whips and ERAs and all sorts of stuff. We're coming to you alive. We're going to do the best I can to kind of get through this show. I wasn't kidding about the AQI. I was kidding when I said 2.7 would be bad.

Everyone knows 2.7 is a good AQI. Why? What are we stupid? But I noticed, you know, the air quality doesn't really impact me a ton until I really start talking a lot. Like yesterday, even early in the morning, I went for a run. And that was, you know, I don't want to hear anyone, by the way, listener discretion advised when you're listening to this program. Number one, I'm occasionally some language. Number two, this podcast is objectively terrible. And hello to our friends in Pekistan and Nigeria. Thank you for making us the 78th and 178th ranked comedy podcast. guest in your wonderful nations.

Hopefully no smoke from Ontario over there for you. Didn't cross the pond. But what I was going to say before I forgot we hadn't advised the younglings about language, I don't want anyone shit about oh, you shouldn't run when it's smoky

out because I literally, I was up yesterday, 5.30 a.m. There had been no it's been a 36 hour kind of conversation at this point. It's 5 p.m. Friday right now about the air quality and I had seen like I think it was like Tuesday or something I saw there was a semi or fully viral video of this train in Ontario that was like completely surrounded by flames

on all sides and they had the video the conductor was was shooting the video from inside the you know cockpit or whatever you would call it on a train and so that's really the first I heard about wildfires in Ontario but I hadn't you know heard or seen anything about smoke down here in Chicago. It wasn't on my radar at all. So I get up because on top of all the smokiness from the fires, we're having a heat wave part two here in Chicago this week, mid-90s with high humidity all week. So I've been getting up early to get my runs in, understandably. And yeah, I wake up yesterday. I'm out there by like 5.45 a.m. And all of a sudden I step out onto the street and take off my run and I realize this is looking kind of apocalyptic. This is not normal. Just the

the fogginess or what I perceived to be fogginess. It turns out was smoke and then eventually coming back, running east, looking at the sun and just super red and realized this is not normal. But what I was trying to say earlier is in this, we had some wildfires here in Chicago from Canada, maybe two or three summers ago. It doesn't really, on the surface at least, impact my running. Who knows what it's due into my lungs?

I don't know. but I did notice I was at a work event last night then although I was talking and the more I talk the I just tend to get like more of a dry throat need to be fully equipped with cough drops of which I am not although I'm recording here at the home studio I could have grabbed one to help in advance of this Herculean effort recording another show here in season nine getting up we're all i think we're at this is we're almost a show 450 which is exciting we're we're going to have the big 500th celebration 500 episodes celebration i think i i mapped it out like two or three years ago maybe i think it's october of 2027 is when we get there which checks out right because there's like 52 weeks in a year 10 seasons you do that you know full time that that would come out to like 50020 episodes or something like that so subtract however many and you get to October essentially.

So we're just over a year away from 500 episodes, which is exciting. Sipping on Portuguese white wine currently. I always look forward to, and this summer was no exception, my go-to summer bev, I would say. You know, my beverages kind of change with the seasons, Stephen King. the different seasons it's a collection of four novellas apt pupil they made into a movie with ian mccelan the body which they made into the movie stand by me you probably know uh that other one uh reida hayworth and the shawshank redemption they made into a movie called the shawshank redemption

and then the fourth one i can't remember what it's called but it's like a it's like a story set within a story. Some guys like telling a spooky story and it's a I don't know someone someone I think the lady gets like beheaded or something I can't remember exactly how it goes in my mind this is is going to sound silly but in my mind I always conflate whatever the plot of that story is with uh if you if you recall the Cohen brothers Netflix movie from about five years ago Buster Scruggs the ballad of Buster Scruggs you know it's like an anthology there's like five five or six shorter tails in that one.

There's a James Franco bank robber one. There's Buster Scruggs where he's like robbing banks and ends up getting shot and flies into heaven and sings his song, Tim Blake Nelson. There's the prospector one with what's his name, the singer, Tom Waits.

There's the one with a girl, what's her name? She's, I can't remember what that actress's name is. but she ends up like shooting a guy accidentally or she thinks the guy is dead something like that. But then, oh, and then there's also, oh, there's the Liam Neeson one where he's like the traveling circus guy, minstrel guy kind of con man with what's his name from Harry Potter's in it. But then the last one in that, which is probably the like the least memorable one I would say. the last short film in that collection is the one with Brendan Gleason. And I don't remember who the other actors and actresses are.

It's probably the shortest one. They're just like riding in the carriage at night and it's kind of spooky. And it's like, what are they here for? And they get out and they're carrying the coffin and they all stay at the hotel together. It's not like a super memorable one in my mind. But it's kind of spooky. The ambience, ambiance, if you want to say. say it fancily is kind of what it's all about.

I conflate for whatever reason. That story with whatever the fourth Stephen King novella is, I can't remember what it's called. But if you remember, email us, Beantown Podcast at yahoo.com. Again, it's Beantown, B-E-A, and Tunin podcast at Yahoo.com. But sipping on my white wine from Portugal. I love white wine in the summer is what I was trying to say. It's my seasonal bev white wine in the summer, some ice cubes.

it's a good stuff man I don't typically record from our office usually I'm more of a couch guy in the living room but we've got a second bedroom here it's our office doesn't get a ton of action because our Wi-Fi doesn't work well in here which is just you know I understand when I say it out loud how stupid that sounds but one of the things you know we live here in a busy street on the we live on the south side on the north side of this street we live across this you know strip, it's commercial first floor, residential, second floor, and it's kind of dead. From left to right, there's what used to be a dentist office and it's been vacant the whole time we've lived here,

so not much there. Then there's an upholstery store, which their door is always locked, and occasionally you'll see people like go in there, they have to knock to get let in, and it might be a front. I'm not sure. I don't know much about upholstery businesses in general. U-P-H-O-L-S-T-E-R-Y. But then to the right of that, there is this tiny little, I don't know, mom, I call it mom and pop, but it's got absolutely terrible reviews online. So I feel like when you call something mom and pop, it's usually positive connotations in my mind at least, but I don't know if I can call this store that I think has

negative reputation mom and pop. It's a real estate, you know, like apartment leasing service or apartment management service. I can't even remember exactly what it's called. But, you know, I've researched it online once or twice. They got this tiny little portfolio of apartments, but they have this storefront. And from what I can ascertain, A-S-C-E-R-T-A-I-N, you have to pay your rent in person with checks because I see people trying to get in there all the time. and the door is locked.

Well, it's actually, I said it was 5 p.m. earlier, I was jumped the gun a little bit. It's currently 457 and I just saw some POR sap walk up with a white envelope trying to get into this office at 4.57 p.m. on a Friday. And, you know, presumably it's one of those situations where they say they're open until 5. But I don't know. I just feel like there can't be that much going on at a kind of standalone leasing office. after two or three in the afternoon on a Friday, maybe even noon or one, or maybe they have summer Fridays, I don't know, but the stones on this guy to attempt paying your rent in person at 458 on a Friday.

It just seems risky, especially in the summers. So I don't know if he's, you know, it is July 17th, so I don't know if he, you know, usually these leases or rents due on the first or 31st of the month or something. But moral of the story, he wasn't able to pay. And you'd think they would have like a little slot that you can drop something into. You see mail slots like that. And some of these rental car places too, you know, have after hours return and just drop the keys in. Which I always, I don't rent cars now as much as I used to.

One, because they don't travel a ton for work. And two, I have, you know, we have our own car now. but it was always such a pain in the butt when I was traveling for work. You know, you're trying to figure out the perfect rental spot, and you might have a situation where you're like, you're going to be done with a car by like Sunday morning or something. And you're just like in an ideal world, even if you're not open, I'll just bring it back, drop the keys in the little slot,

and you take it from there. We're good to go, and you let me know if there's any issues, but there won't be because I'm a stellar driver. But a lot of these car rental places don't allow for after hours drop off. It's obviously very common at the airport. There's always someone staffing it. But a lot of these other pop-up, or not pop-up, but just neighborhood places, don't allow for that. Many of them do, but a lot of them don't.

And that was always a big pet peeve of mine, especially as I was like traveling and living in cities. If I'm renting a car, it's like, I don't want to be responsible for this for another 24 hours. It's like, as soon as I'm done with the car, I just want to dump it. I don't have to worry about street parking or anything like that, but this is not particularly interesting conversation. It's just something that came to mind. And then there's one other, there's, there's one other store here next to the real estate spot. And I, for the life of me, I don't know what it is. They don't have any signage up. You can see in there from the outside, but there's just not a lot happening. And I did. It is,

five o'clock I did just watch someone exit polo and khakis backpack looks like he could be a college kid so I don't know what type of administrative excuse me rule or work is being done there but a Google search of the address doesn't seem to reveal anything maybe it maybe it's this it's a staffing agency potentially what are we what are we doing here we are we wait for this smart, scalable virtual staffing. Their virtual assistants help you reclaim your time, streamline your task, and maximize your productivity. Outfit your team with experienced virtual assistants

starting at $12 an hour. So it's a virtual assistant that you pay $12 an hour. What does a virtual assistant do and $12 an hour? I guess that's a federal minimum wage is still like $3.25 or something. Here in Illinois, we're up to like 15 or 16 bucks. But, yeah, federally, it's still quite low, as I understand it. There has never been a better time to get to our Animal of the Week. Sponsored by our good friends at Home Pride, Oregon.

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but that means NFL college football seasons are just around the way. And also, it's worth mentioning Beantown Sportsbook does not just do sports. If you are maybe a presidential teleprompter operator and you wanted to put up the words on the president's teleprompter operator, and you wanted to put up the words on the president's teleprompter and then make a big bet about how many times he's going to say, you know, this word or that word or fall asleep or whatever it is, you can then do some real cool insider trading stuff right here in the Beantown Sportsbook,

cash in, send your bets up, up, up, and away into orbit, and face no repercussions about it. So that's what you get from the Beantown Sportsbook. our Animal of the Week inspired by a little entomological adventure we had here. Is that the study of bugs? Is that right? We're pretty fortunate, you know, this apartment, this particular year of our lease, this third year has been rough in a couple different ways.

But generally speaking, as far as nature and critters and wildlife goes, this apartment's been pretty solid, kind of the perks of living up on the third floor. although I had experience with this animal of the week, which I'll mention in the second, my primary life experience was not on the third floor, but the fourth floor when I lived in Buena Park here in Chicago. I lived in the fourth floor of a high-rise that was just infested, and you might know where this is going. It's the mighty cockroach is our animal of the week.

So we had a cockroach in the apartment earlier this week and found it under a damp towel. Well, the towel wasn't really damp, but it was a cool place for the cockroach to hang out and ended up unearthing it eventually and took care of it, squished it. I'm the type of guy. I'm not like a, I fall somewhere in between as far as the whole animal cruelty thing goes. That sounds terrible to say as if like, you know, I'm not completely against animal cruelty. What I'm getting at is I try to make an effort when I can if like you find a pest or a bug. or something, you know, wandering your apartment. I don't instantly want to be like,

I'm just going to smash the shit out of this thing. I want to give it a chance to defend itself or bring it outside onto a nice, you know, leaf or pedal or blade of grass or something. But there are certain instances, ants, for example, we had a whole ant saga, not the Woody Allen kind, but the invasive species kind in my apartment back in, like, season five or whatever that was.

And, you know, or like a fly, right? I'm not going through the effort to try to cradle a common house fly. But there's, you know, if I see a praying mantis ambling through my apartment, I'm not going to do a big squish, right? So maybe I'm a bug racist or something. But when you see the cockroach and it's just as big as it is, my first thought was like, I'm going to try to get this thing outside.

And then I was like, you know what, it's a cockroach. Maybe, you know, maybe this is unfair PR or perceptions for them. But I just decided we just got to, we're just going to have to end it here, buddy. It didn't help that he'd been under this towel for, you know, a handful of days. And he was moving. He looked a little bit woozy. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't your kind of fully, herbie fully loaded moving at 100%. So I was like, maybe I'm doing this guy a favor by putting him out of its misery.

So that's what I did. But the cockroach is, first of all, there's a lot of them. We had like the big kind going on in our apartment. I don't know if it's, was it like the German cockroach, I think. Because there are different, no, the German cockroach is a smaller one. When I lived in Buena Park, that's what we had. I would wake up in the morning. I'd always be the first one to wake up because I had to be down to campus about like seven or something.

So I'll get up at like 530, 545, going to. the kitchen get some coffee going or whatever and turn on the lights and you just see them scatter you know mostly the the range the oven is where they're hanging out but the sink and all sorts of stuff but those are the little guys which are the german cockroach seems to be the smallest i'm on the wikipedia page and they've got a little diagram here five cockroaches labeled abc and d and e and yeah german seems to be they've all got these long uh antenna but they the german seems to be the smaller one. Then the American one is the big sucker. There's also the Australian cockroach. I'm just going to guess that's not what we saw. And then there's the Oriental

cockroach, not a very woke naming convention. Oriental cockroach gets both labeled D and E. So I don't know if one is just a side profile or is that, oh, it's male and female. They're kind of different. That's kind of interesting. How many animals out there are there where the male and the female are like significantly different looking you have the whole you know the deer thing whereas like the male species have the horns or antlers and the females don't you know get that with moose there's a big difference there and then certainly with lions uh the males have the the mains and the females don't that's a pretty big difference but in terms of like fundamentally like just different looking uh

How much of that do we get? If you show me two chimpanzees side by side, I don't think I can tell you, this one's the male, this one's the female. It's like humans and cockroaches. I guess you could make an asterisk for bees because queen bees are always female, but not all. Wait, what's going on with this?

Are all female bees become queens? And there's just like not a lot of them, or 99% of the female bees die or something like that. We're going to investigate this. We're going to move off our cockroach conversation, but we will come back to it for trivia, I promise. But I find bees just to be more interesting to talk about than just learning more about cockroaches. It's just not a very pleasant subject.

So when I think about bees, and we'll turn this over to Google in a second, but you got your queen bee, obviously a female. But then there's other classifications, right? There's the worker bees. There's drones. Are there drones like the Queen's Guard? Is that what their deal is? Because workers, you know, they're out in the fields, the pollen.

I don't really know what the drones are doing. B-R-R-R-R-E-R-E-S. Let's learn about that first. Not B-R-R-E-R-E-S. This is B-R-R-L-E-S. The Queen handles. reproduction female worker bees man well this answered my question so not all females become queens female worker bees manage all maintenance and foraging and drones mate so are what about male worker bees

let's go to the wikipedia article for worker bee this is interesting okay this is changing this changes everything a worker bee is any female bee that lacks the reproductive capacity of the colonies queen and carries out the majority of tasks need for the functioning of the hive. Okay, so all worker bees are females, all queens are females. Ergo de facto are all drones, males. Let's see, a drone is a male honeybee. There we go, okay, you know, I didn't know this. I thought it was more based off of like, you know, their occupation or something.

And I think that's part of it too. I think their gender determines their occupation. but all drones are males. I didn't know that until today. Unlike the female worker bee, a drone has no stinger. It does not gather nectar or pollen and cannot feed without assistance from worker bees. Its only role is to mate with a maiden queen in nuptial flight

and often dies after doing so. So really, the female bees are kind of running the show here, whether you're doing the pollen where you're doing queen shit. And these poor saps, the males, the drones, their only job, I was like, oh, maybe their job is to protect the queen. It seems like they're more, they're just bang the queen and then they die. So that doesn't seem like a great life.

And it's not the worst life. Like I'd rather be a drone than an oriental cockroach. But it's closer than I might have thought 10 minutes ago. So there you go. It's kind of a two-for-one animal of the week special for you, cockroach and then eventually bees. We're over halfway done with our animal of the week, if you can believe that. I should assemble a list.

I've done a pretty good job this year of creating a note in my iPhone for every week of the show to be prepared. And so I've got to have most of the animal of the week's written down, but I'm probably missing one or two. but we'll try to assemble that. Any, you know, well-organized, well-established show would be able to do that. It would help if I had a producer. Maybe I should call this virtual staffing company,

virtual agent staffing company across the street for me for $12 an hour. See if I can get a virtual agent. You know, when I was on their website, it was like things we can help with, like data entry, marketing, administration. It didn't say anything about podcast hosting. But for $12 an hour, it might be a good investment. I don't know, something worth checking out. All right, let's get to, oh, we have one other thing that popped up,

just a very brief top of the head kind of comment. It'll be quick, I promise. Then we'll get to our top 10 campfire songs in honor of the wildfire smoke from Ontario. I don't know if this was a word in, if I guessed it in Wordle or if it was in connections. one of the New York Times word games, something like that. But the word decal came into my mind, D-E-C-A-L, like something you'd put in a window or back of your car, similar to a bumper sticker.

And I was like, in decal, that's got to be short for something, right? Like no one ever says a long-hand form of decal. It's not as extreme as like decaf versus decaffeinated. Like everyone knows decalph is short for decaffeinated. You'd almost never say decaffeinated, but everyone knows what decaf is short for. So my question to you, the listeners, is do you know what decal is short for? Because up until 10 a.m. this morning, I had zero clue. And it's probably not something I'm going to remember because unlike decaffeinated,

you would absolutely never say the long form version of this word. But the decal, the word decal is short for. and if you know this chime in let us know tweet at us at bean town cast decalcomania D-E-C-A-L-C-O-M-A-N-I-A and the whole like point or purpose of decalcomania is it's any sort of like pattern that you can then take off of a you know pottery or something and apply it to something else so it's That's interesting too because I feel like it's similar to what a decal is, but it's technically different.

So the definitions change as you shorten these words, unlike decaffeinated to decaf, which I think are inherently the same definition. So there you go. This morning with the smoke decided, let's turn this into a show. And I was talking to my wife the other day about bonfires growing up and how that was just like a very common, classic kind of social hangout event scene, you know, thing, basically for us homeschoolers and God-fearing Christians growing up, especially, you know, I didn't grow up in the country, but was surrounded by a lot of ruralness.

and so a lot of our homeschool and church friends lived in places that had a little bit more land and space and room for large fire pits and so spent a lot of time at bonfires growing up and smokiness and smores and Frankfurters and you know

come home smelling like a campfire and much like I smell right now from all this smoke outside and so I thought to myself you know what, let's, we've done some power rankings lately, but let's add another one to the Beantown lore. It's one of our calling cards, power ranking here in the show. Let's come up with top 10 best campfire songs. And so that's pretty, you know, a campfire song. I think it's one of those things to a certain extent, unless I'm overstepping or assuming or generalizing. I feel that a Campfire song generally is kind of a you know it when you see it, and there is some leeway.

But, you know, it's got to be something that you can play pretty, you can strum pretty simply on the guitar. And it's a relatively well-known song. And it's got generally positive connotations. I would say those, that's kind of the criteria I'm thinking about in my head. And there's one or two on this list. Let's see. I think there's two that are very much more old-timey, you know, traditional. If you go ask Wikipedia, hey, who wrote this song, it's either like an English ballad from the 16th century

or it's just like, no, there's no actual author or composer. It's just in parentheses, just traditional, like green sleeves or something. There's like two of those on here, one towards the top of the list, one towards the bottom. But otherwise, I expanded this out a little bit more. I infused my own musical tastes and interests. And so I think what we'll find is there's going to be some songs on here where you might see it come up in my ranking and you might say, oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

And then one or a couple other ones where you're like, that's not really a campfire song, but it's just when you think about that criteria that I have established, I think you'll find that it fits quite nicely. So this also, you know, if we had better technological, capabilities if we were more integrated into Spotify or something maybe I would just create like the bean town podcast campfire song playlist but I guess I can create a playlist on YouTube maybe I'll do that and share it out but our YouTube channel doesn't get a lot of action and I don't

put a lot of work or effort into it I I stream like once a year so I don't know maybe we'll make a YouTube playlist that you can go listen to. But whether you need me to actually curate the playlist for you or if you just want to go listen to some of these bangers, feel free. And I'm pretty sure we're all going to know pretty much all of these songs, I hope. Coming into number 10, maybe the one if you really wanted to piss your friends off,

maybe you'd go with this one. But in honor of the World Cup and England's run and it just being such a classic, you know, almost meme-ish kind of, you know, guitar song, it's Wonderwall by Oasis coming in at number 10. Now, I never heard Wonderwall, I don't think as a kid or on any of our, you know, homeschool bonfires or anything like that.

I don't think Oasis was on the approved list of songs. If it's not Jeremy Camp or Hill Song or Switchfoot, it's probably not allowed. But when you break it down, you realize Wonderwall, you know, pretty simple. to play in the guitar. In this day and age, almost everyone knows the lyrics. For as many bangers and great songs as Oasis has, this one tends to be the most well-known. And I think at the end of the day, you know, love it or hate it. Everyone kind of knows it and you can all kind of

sing along. And that's what Camp Fire songs are about at the end of the day. It's about community and a nice little strum going on in the guitar. And so I think when you really dive down deep, realize Wonderwall by Oasis coming in and number 10 is actually a great campfire song. Number nine, don't know too much about this song. This one's kind of like Michael row the boat ashore. This has got to be a traditional song. I don't think anyone actually wrote this song. It just is traditional and it just existed some one day.

And in my mind, I don't know, you might feel differently. This is the quintessential campfire song. You might raise a stink. that I kept it at number nine, but, like, everyone's got to go sometime. Number nine is kumbaya. Kumbaya, my lord, kumbaya. Oh, Lord, kumbaya. And I guess this is as good a time as any to actually,

we're not going to do deep dive research into every single song on this list and give you a background. But, you know, kumbaya is this one where it's like everyone knows kumbaya, Everyone knows the melody and generally, I think, like a classic campfire song. There's not many other settings where it feels socially acceptable to be singing kumbaya. But let's do a slight dive in here just to the Wikipedia article. Just to all, we'll take 30 seconds to become slightly more educated on what kumbaya means. In English, come by here is an African-American spiritual disputed origin.

There you go. known to have been sung in the Gola culture of the islands off South Carolina and Georgia. Now, I don't know much about Gola culture. African-American group rooted in the coastal areas of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Interesting. Distinctive culture in Creole language known as the Gola. All right, well, there you. We could do a deep dive into that some other time.

But Kubaya, originally an appeal to God to come to the aid of those in need. The song is thought to have spread from the islands. to other southern states and the north as well as to other places outside the U.S. Recorded in 1926 for the first time. And yeah, so we learned a little bit about Kumbaya and we learned a little bit about the Gullah culture. So there you go. Never spent a lot of time around the Carolina coast. We took one family trip to Hilton Head Island when I was like middle school or like,

high school age and then and i think on that same trip spent a day in savannah georgia but literally like eight hours and i don't think i've ever been i've been to uh the myrtle beach airport uh on my birthday actually it was the day that umbc beat virginia 16 to one seeds uh in the march madness tournament whatever year that would have been 2018 something like that. But like a North Carolina coastal town, Cape Hatteras, don't have any experience there. So I'm not very knowledgeable at the Gola culture.

Coming in at number eight on our ranking, maybe not one you might be thinking of, but when you just step back for a second, you realize it's just a nice kind of solo acoustic, not acoustic, a solo acoustic guitar song, white stripes, We are going to be friends. Which I remember, I think the first time I ever heard that song was the opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite.

And I think when I heard it for the first time, I was like, oh, this must be some, like, older song. You know, it's a very, like, simple, old feeling kind of, feels kind of old-timey kind of song. And then I didn't realize it's from like 2001 or 2002, something like that. Jack White, White Stripes. And, yeah, it's played over the opening. credits of Napoleon Dynamite where they're you know it's very like homemade homemade movie across the board but certainly the opening credits it's just a bunch of like you know cafeteria trays trays and school supplies and formed into letters and words and it's good stuff and then i think jack johnson

who was just performing here in chicago last weekend i think he may have done a cover as well but you know how it goes fall this year dino do dan do bum ba bum but um There's a nine, do da-da-da-do, I can tell that we are going to be friends. A very simple song. And that's what you want in a campfire song. You want easy to play. You want simplicity. It doesn't even matter if you know all the words because everyone knows the refrain.

I can tell that we are going to be friends. And it's good for community, right? Friendship. So that's why we are going to be friends is coming in at number eight. Number seven was tough because I knew I had to include this band, somewhere and there was probably i could give you five maybe ten songs i'm like yeah this is a perfect campfire song from just this band's collection so the band is ccr credence clear water revival and i kind of just went with my gut instinct here it's not their most popular

song but it's a song i've always loved it's much slower than most of their other tunes long as i can see the light um and yeah you can fight me there you know there's other ones that would be great whether you want to go heard through the grapevine or proud Mary or a really good one. One of my favorites would be, you know, how does it go? Do do, do, do coming out my back door, whatever the name of that song is. Down on the corner, anyways, I mean, John Fogart is a genius. I just, I like, long as I can see the light, good guitar, easy to play. you might not know all the words but in the other here's this is probably the one song in the list where you're going to want to bring you're going to want your friend or maybe your mom my mom has one to bring the saxophone for that sick solo that's going to really add to the vibes but make sure you wash your saxophone after you finish playing to get the ash out someone out there's got to do a great mashup of home alone and long as I can see the light because they both talk about candles in the window

Speaking of which, Home Alone 2, Rip, that Irish lady, the actress, she passed away today. I don't remember what her name is, but she was in other stuff too. I don't remember. I don't know if I've ever seen another film with her. But the homeless lady in Central Park in Home Alone 2 lost to New York, that actress she passed away today. Rip. What's the, you know, towards the end, right before the start of the third. She, like, lives up above Carnegie Hall or something.

How does she get a spot up there? She's, like, up in the rafters. And they're, like, sitting there having their heart-to-heart conversation, her and Kevin McAllister. And they're, like, watching the, is it like a choir singing? I know he watches the choir singing in the church in Wilmette in the first one. So is the second one? Is it an orchestra performing or is it another choir in New York?

I can't remember. But, yeah, she passed away today. or yesterday. I saw it today. So, rip. See that Irish actress. As long as I can see, the light, was number seven. Number six, a song I absolutely loved, like 15 years ago,

was probably my top five most played songs for a period. And I wouldn't consider myself to be the number one Pink Floyd Stan. You know, I don't know a ton of their stuff outside of, like, their main two or three albums and, you know, Dark Side of the Moon, obviously, and some of their other singles. But I absolutely love this song, and it's actually pretty easy to play in the guitar, and it's a nice, simple one, it's yearning, it's nostalgic. Number six on my list is wish you were here. How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish, year after year

running over the same old town how we found the same old fears wish you were here that's a great one I think if you put gun to my head made me pick my top Pink Floyd song it'd probably be that

although I do love brain damage slash eclipse to close out dark side of the moon just a great banger. Especially that lady, you know, who's singing kind of in the background as they're fading out or playing out of eclipse is so good, man. She's all, her pipes are golden.

It's too good. What do we think her name is? Is that the same lady who does like the Rolling Stone songs? Let's see. We're trying to be selective about what we, well, you know what, in honor of, to honor the dead, we got to first give a name drop to this Home Alone to actress so he can properly say rest in peace. Brenda Fricker, Irish actress, died July 16th, 2026. Speaking of which, happy birthday to my dad, Steve, you know him from Home Pride, Oregon.

Happy birthday yesterday. She earned an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in My Left Foot. Excuse me, which I don't know much about. It's a biopic. don't know who it's about. Janice Joplin, Brenda Fricker, we'll never know.

But we could find out right now, my left foot, and then we'll Google the lady who sings on that Pink Floyd song. My left foot is stars Daniel Day Lewis. Yeah, I'd never seen this one. Let's see.

Stars Daniel Day Lewis is Brown. Let's see. Christy Brown. that's a guy Christy Brown, the male? I think so. As Brown an Irish man born with cerebral palsy

who could only control his left foot okay and Christy Brown was an Irish writer and painter from 1932 to 1981 so there you go. I've never seen it I'm probably never going to watch my left foot if we're being real but

you know it's okay I'm sure it's a great piece of art brain damage eclipse is what i wanted to look up i want to figure out this lady's name because she's uh she's got the pipes let's see the last song on dark side of the moon sung by roger waters um do do do too too okay there it is personnel what's this lady's name leslie duncan is that her there's also leslie duncan there's doris troy leslie duncan let's see I don't know. Anyways, we're spending too much time on this. I apologize. But there's some good stuff here. And I think I, oh, it's probably Doris Troy. She's got a more built-out Wikipedia page.

Known to her fans is Mama Soul, which reminds me of Soul from Love Island because she's got the famous quote, Mama Happy. But this is Mama Soul. So she had a solo career herself. But I'm guessing this is the lady who also did Rolling Stone stuff. I don't know. I don't want to assume anything. I just thought that I had seen that somewhere. I don't know. We'll keep things moving. If there's any rock music buffs out there, you can let us know.

I think what I'm thinking in my head is symphony for the, not symphony for the devil. That would be a whole other thing, sympathy for the devil. Is that the one who's got, oh no, it's not simply for the devil? is it? I don't know. We're really all over the place here. I apologize. Let's see who the other people on here are. I don't know. It's okay. We're just going to keep this going.

We've got to get back to the campfires. I apologize. That was a detour. If anyone out there knows anything about backing vocalists for Pink Floyd and or the Rolling Stones, email us, Beantown Podcasts at yahoo.com. We've got to finish up this list. So we had a trivia question and a bonus question. Coming in at number five, a slightly more recent installment, although not as recent as the white stripes. I think this song's from the 90s.

Go to Riddance, also known as Time of Your Life by Green Day. It's a classic. Every millennial knows it. It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right. I hope you have the time of your life. which for better or for worse the song has i think it's uh interpretation

connotation whatever word you want to use is changed and now it's it's seen as like a nostalgic look back kind of song uh in fact in fact i think at my like high school graduation they did like a slideshow everyone gets like their senior picture in there and maybe like a picture as a baby or something it's just you know a PowerPoint or something And I think that was one of the songs they played over. My homeschool community liked that song a lot. They used it in different capacities. They really liked that song.

It's like every graduation they used that song, Small Wonders by Matchbox 20 guy, Rob Thomas, the song from Meet the Robinsons, that Disney movie from like 2005. All lives are made with these small hours, these little wonders these twisted turns of fate I can't do a Rob Thomas impression

but that's okay but Goodridden's itself is a breakup song the lyrics are actually pretty cruel but not cruel enough I guess because the song has kind of been repurposed and Billy Joel

continues not Billy Joel Billy Joe continues to play it I think pretty much all their concerts and I think he's probably oh I can't speak for how he interprets the song you know, 30 years later after writing it, but it seems like he's embraced the popularity, at least. Okay, that was number five.

Number four, originally by the great Hank Williams Sr., and that version is the better campfire song, but you might know it better from George Thurgood and the Destroyers, move it on over. I come in last night about half past 10, that baby of mine wouldn't let me in. So move it on over, rock it on over. Move over, big dog, a hot dog's coming in. And it's just blues, easy, three chords, super easy to play on the guitar. You're bemoaning.

It's a little bit more obvious than maybe Good Redents by Green Day. And definitely not the most traditional Campfire song, but a great old kind of Hank Williams, senior cowboy. Kyle Polk kind of song. And I enjoy it. I mean, there are two different versions, obviously, and probably way more than that, that I just don't know about.

But I first knew about it as a thoroughgood and the destroyer song, and then, of course, you research it. Really, there's only like four people in history that have ever actually written a song. Everything is a cover of that. It's either traditional, or it's Hank Williams, Sr.,

or it's Paul McCartney, or, I don't know, Al Jolson or something like that. That's, I take back my fourth guest. Someone else from like the 40s, who it seems like every song is actually a cover of that song. Chris Christopherson. Let's put that out there. I feel like that guy wrote everything.

Moving on over, number four. Good, as always, good guitar work from George Thorogood on his cover. Number three, speaking of famous, cover is you probably know this as an eagle song but originally written by one of my favorites Jackson brown although I do like the Eagles as well it is take it easy it's a good one easy chords to strum on the guitar everyone knows it a lot of people know the words I'm standing on a corner Winslow Arizona something something something right everyone knows the words take it easy take it easy don't let the sound of your own somethings drive you crazy

Wrists in peace, rest in peace, Glenn Fry. But yeah, take it easy is a good one. Easy to play in the guitar. Maybe not a traditional campfire song, but it makes my list at number three. Okay, I mentioned at the outset that I would have two songs that felt very traditional. Kumbaya being the first one.

Here comes the second one in number two. Home on the range. Home, home on the range. where the deer and the is it buffalo or antelope range i don't know probably buffalo we talk about buffalo a lot on this program this season i feel like i feel like the spiritual cousin to home on the range that didn't make this list but we'll put it in as an honorable mention oh susanna da da da da da da da bum bum bum bum but um bum bum bum bum bum bum oh susanna don't you cry for me i'm coming down to Oklahoma with a banjo on my knee.

We'll throw that in there as an honorable mention. But yeah, Home on the Range gets number two. The other honorable mention I actually had this thought earlier, and I forgot about it until now. Stan Jones. I don't know anything about Stan Jones, but Ben Gibbard did a solo album, The Frontman from Death Cab for Cutie.

Did a solo album like a decade ago, and he covered probably more than a decade ago. He covered a song by Stan Jones and kind of put his own flare on it. And I know in a radio interview he says, this is an old cowboy song by Stan Jones. And the song, at least Ben Gibbard's song, it's called Something's Rattling. So I don't know if that's the same as the Stan Jones song. And I don't know anything about Stan Jones. This will be our last lookup, I promise, before we reveal number one in our trivia question.

But maybe you never heard of Stan Jones before and you're curious and we'll take 30. seconds to learn about him. Stanley Slick Davis Jones 1914 and 1963 was an American singer and songwriter, primarily Western music, primarily writing Western music. He's best remember for writing ghost riders in the sky. And yeah, he died relatively young in Los Angeles and a musical career. Yeah, I mean, I don't have a ton else about him. Just know Stan Jones was a great Western music. songwriter. So there you go. And if you want to, you can listen to Ghost Writers in the Sky,

which I'm pretty sure I know, but I would need to listen to it for sure to be 100%. And coming in at number one, I don't think this song is quite ubiquitous enough for everyone to be like, oh yeah, this one's definitely going to have to be number one. But hopefully when I say it, you'll agree with me that, although you may not want to hear it at your campfire

because of the sheer length. You can't deny its goaded status. That's right. It's Don McLean's American Pie. Long, long time ago, I can still remember. Yada, yada, yada. Everyone knows the course, though. That's the important thing.

Bye, bye. Miss American Pie. Took my Chevy to the levee, but the levy was dry. Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye singing, This will be the day that I die. one of my favorite like outro closing segments of a TV show ever

the office the episode the chair model Deborah Shafeleski or whatever dies in a drunk driving accident I think that's how she dies and Michael and Dwight are grieving or Michael's grieving

so at the end of the episode they go to the cemetery so Michael can get Steve Karel can get closure and at the end they sing all of American Pie. They don't show all of it, but, you know, cut up into different segments. And then at the end, they just kind of finally finish singing and kind of just

walk away. That's how the episode ends. So that's Don McLean's American Pie. Classic one-hit wonder, but what a wonder it was. So speaking of wonders, number 10, Wonderwall, we had two honorable mentions. Anything by Stan Jones. And oh Susanna. Didn't we have another honorable mention? I can't remember. I don't know. Number nine, kumbaya, number eight, we are going to be friends. Seven, long as I can

see the light. Six, wish you were here. Five, good riddance. Four, move it on over. Three, take it easy. Two, home on the range. And number one, American Pie. We'll finish up with our trivia question here as we get into it. I will apologize. I know there were some

some solid rambling on this program today. We're already almost at the hour mark. I'm self-aware to know when a show is a banger and it's high and tight. And then when you have the shows like today where there's a lot of good stuff in there, but to get to it, you really got to kind of suffer through some of the meandering. So apologies for that. But hey, if you're still listening to our show nine seasons in, you probably have come to expect much more of the Mirandaering, Mirandir.

You have the right to listen to the Bean Town Podcasts. I'll tell you that much. I probably come to expect that, you know what, to get to some of the juicy nuggets, you're going to have to sit through some of the crap. So thank you. Put that on a T-shirt. I sat through crap.

I sat through nine seasons of crap on the Bean Dunn podcast to learn who Stan Jones was and listen, hear about who Quinn thinks has the eighth best campfire song. It's all worth it, guys. It's only one will be. one life to live, you might as well live it with Bean Town. That's what I say. Okay, our co-animal of the week, wine's pretty much gone, which means it's time to stop and refill. Our co-animal

week, as a reminder, was a cockroach along with a bee. And so here is my trivia question. We'll get right into it. And I have a clue, and then I have a bonus question, and then that's it. We'll wrap up. Here's the trivia question. Which American sitcom, which was set in Brooklyn, and ran from 1984 to 1992, featured a semi-recurring character named Cockroach. So I chose the term semi-recurring very carefully. I don't know how many episodes this character actually appeared in,

but when you think about this show, cockroach is probably not one of the first 50 people you think of. but they're in there a handful of episodes. They're a friend of one of the main characters, and they pop up here and there. Again, here's the question, the main helpful things being where it's set in the years. This U.S. sitcom set in Brooklyn,

so the show was set in Brooklyn, ran from 1984 to 1992, and I also believe, I don't have this written down, I don't have it researched, but off the top of my head, I believe it was on NBC. featured a semi, excuse me, recurring character named Cockroach. So we're not talking new men levels of, you know,

they're in like 30 episodes or something. We're talking, you know, probably like, I don't know, three to 10, something like that over the course of, I think this show had, well, it's like nine seasons, basically. It's a well-known show. You probably know it. And I will say this. So Cockroach is a character.

This wasn't my bonus, but I'll add this and then we'll do the bonus as well. Cockroach, the character, is friends with one of the main characters. That actor has passed away almost exactly a year ago. I think it was July 20th, 2026, the actor who played the main character, one of the main characters who is friends with cockroach passed away, tragically. Drowning accident. The other clue I have here, this, the show, so whatever the correct answer is, That show spawned a spinoff series titled A Different World.

So there you go. If you need any more time, I don't know how much more mulling over you could possibly do to get this correct answer, but the answer is the Cosby show. Cockroach was one of Theo Huxstable's friends. And, of course, we lost Malcolm Jamal Warner about a year ago, drowning in Costa Rica.

Rest in peace. Your final thing here. Bonus question. Felicia Iers-Alan, actress best known for her portrayal of Claire Huxstable, the matriarch of the Cosby Show. Got a new last name when she married this former NFL and Vikings wide receiver in 1985. And they're long since divorced. But who did Felicia Iirs Allen? I think it was her third husband, Mary in 1985,

took his last name and she's kept it ever since. And she was, by the way, dean of, I think, acting at Howard, Howard University in Washington up until like two years ago, and I think she might be largely retired at this point. But who did Felicia Iers-Alan marry in 1985? The answer is former NFL. and Minnesota Vikings wide receiver, among other teams, but ended his career with the Vikings.

Ahmad Rashad. So there you go. That's our bonus question, bonus trivia question of the week. Thank you so much for listening to my program. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for today, July 17th, 2026. We'll come to you next week with another show. We'll hit you up a little bit early. Got to do some travel next week.

the late great Grandpa Dave, you know him from the roast of Quinn David Furness back early on in the show's days, has gone to the afterlife. And so we'll be traveling to remember him next week. And so definitely be getting a recording in before all that stuff occurs. So be on the lookout for a new show, maybe Thursday, July 23rd would be the target at this point. But TBD, we'll figure it out. until then for all of us here at the bean town podcast i want to thank you so much for listening to my show i hope everyone stay safe stay sane and i'll check in on you next time bye bye