Episode published: Friday 01/23/2026
Michael: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Every Day is Groundhog Day (Except for the Days When It's Not), the only podcast devoted to the holiday, Groundhog Day. I'm your host, Michael from countdowntogroundhogday.com. Hope you enjoyed learning about Athene, the burrowing owl mascot, in our last episode. For today's show, we have a first: a returning guest. Edwin Everhart, who was on earlier in the season to discuss his Groundhog Day-themed album On Groundhog Day. You might remember that at the end of the episode, I mentioned that Edwin had just released a new mini-album called Here Comes the Groundhog. Well, I thought it might be a good idea to have him back on the show to discuss that album in more detail. So, we sat down and had another discussion. Here's the interview.
Michael: So today, I believe for the first time on this show, we have a returning guest. Edwin Everhart, who released the Groundhog Day-themed album On Groundhog Day, and who I spoke to on the second episode of this season of the podcast, is back because he just released a new mini-album called Here Comes the Groundhog. So welcome back, Edwin.
Edwin Everhart: Hi! It's so wonderful to be back.
Michael: So, I just want to talk a little bit about this new mini-album. I believe you released it right around... I think it was the day after Christmas, right?
Edwin Everhart: Yeah, about then.
Michael: Okay. Could you talk a little bit about it and why you decided to put it together, how long it's been in the making? I don't know if you had the idea of doing it the last time we spoke, or if it's come up since then.
Edwin Everhart: Since the first days, having made the first Groundhog Day-themed holiday album, you know, we made that, me and some friends got together and made that in the basement at night in a little party atmosphere. That was a great time, but there were a couple of tracks where I thought, 'This is a little muddled, this is a little unclear, this is a little cloudy.' You're not really getting the tune clearly, you might not be getting the words as clearly as I'd like. So, right from the get-go, I thought, well, there's going to be one or two of these that I'm going to want to do another take at recording. And then also, I had these songs, right? We took them out to our Groundhog Day party that we did in western Massachusetts, and that party was a success, and then people wanted to sing along with stuff. And then, I was looking at the album and like, all right, which of these are we going to actually do? I was so pleased with it as a holiday album, you know, as something you listen to, but there aren't that many of them proportionally that work to learn on the spot, to learn on the spot, outdoors at your Groundhog Day party. There are a couple that were designed for that, but I was like, I want more options, and I want to lean into that side. So, with this mini-album project, it was like, all right, starting certainly as early as spring of this past year, I was thinking, okay, re-record one or two to get a nice, clear take, clean take, and then add one or two that are real simple and easy to learn right there.
Michael: So, you mentioned that all proceeds from the release date until February 6th are gonna be donated to the community bail fund in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Edwin Everhart: That's right.
Michael: Could you talk a little bit about that? What is a community bail fund?
Edwin Everhart: Yeah, that's right. So, in my vision of Groundhog Day, it's really all about our neighbors and being together. We have this system in the U.S. where you are arrested for whatever, suspicion of a crime, you're not convicted yet, and if the judge thinks you're a real danger, if they think you're a real hazard, they won't allow bail. But very often they'll set bail, and so, you know, if you're able to pay, then you're able to be out until trial because they know you're going to come back for your trial. But this just ends up being a burden for people who don't have that money. You know, the kind of people who like might get charged with doing some shoplifting, or something, are often the kind of people who don't have that kind of money. So, rather than just be subject to some, like, predatory loan sharks and bail bond businesses that try to charge you, you know, 20 percent interest or whatever, we have, a lot of places have this too - we'll see how long we can keep this going legally, the legal atmospheres, there have been some attacks on these - but basically, we have this community bail fund where we all donate and get people out of jail. Like, as long as you're not convicted yet, you're going to go back for your trial, and you shouldn't spend, you know, weeks or months in horrible jail conditions where they don't even give soap, just because you've been accused. You haven't even had the trial yet, right? And they haven't said you're so dangerous that you can't have bail. So, let you be with your neighbors, be with your family. Yeah, so we put money there, and most of it comes right back to the bail fund, right? Because as soon as you go to trial, it's money that's, like, held hostage, or I don't know how to call it. So, it goes, it comes back to the bail fund for the most part. And then there's some few expenses where there will be, like, a 1 percent fee or something on every bail that you have to just pay. So, we do have some losses, but the losses aren't, like... We're not usually paying- For the most part, we're not paying a $20,000 bail that we never see again. It's usually like, okay, we'll pay X amount, and then it just comes right back when the person goes to trial. Anyway, so it's important to me to have our neighbors be able to get together, and families be together, and people not have their lives torn apart, you know, by not being able to go into their job and see their kids and so on. So yeah, so we're doing a little bit of support for the community bail fund this time with the album.
Michael: Okay, great. I mean, that sounds like a really good cause. I know we talked about metrics for the original album, are you able to talk a little bit about how much you've raised so far?
Edwin Everhart: Yeah, so far for the mini-album, it's in the neighborhood of, like, a hundred bucks so far. It's not vast, but I'll be pleased to pass along wherever we get. You know, I'm just having fun doing the project, and if anybody wants to send along a little cash, we'll pass that on. For the earlier album, I was looking at my Bandcamp statistics. I have 2,000 downloads apparently, just crested over 2,000 downloads. So, I think we're doing well there.
Michael: Oh wow! Does it give you, like, a breakdown of, was a lot of it last year? Are you getting more... Is the word getting out now, or more people are starting to look as we're heading towards this Groundhog Day season?
Edwin Everhart: So, there was a big peak when I released the Groundhog Day holiday album On Groundhog Day last year. It's a strange title- I didn't release it on Groundhog Day, the title of the album is On Groundhog Day.[chuckles] So, when I released it in early January last year, there's a big peak there. The numbers have been kind of climbing again in the last couple of weeks here, so that's been good to see. We'll see how it goes through the rest of the month, leading up to February.
Michael: Yeah. I mean, I feel like there's a real desire for Groundhog Day music, as I think we talked about the last time, and I've been saying for a long time. So, hopefully, you just see those numbers continue to rise. All right. Can we go into a little more detail on the songs on the album?
Edwin Everhart: Absolutely.
Michael: I know you said there's a number of alternate takes. So, there's four alternate versions of songs that were on the original album, and then there's three new songs. So, could we go down that list? When the Neighbors' is the first song on this mini-album, and it was also the first song on the original album, right?
Edwin Everhart: Yeah, that's right. To my mind, it captures more than anything else, the sort of spirit of this world and of alternate universe Groundhog Day that I would like to capture here. In this take, it's slower, and I wanted to give the text a lot more clearly. It's still fun, very positive, very warm tone to it, but I wanted to give it a little more, like, you understand what's happening. I think it works adequately well. I mean, what you'll notice about this mini-album is the whole thing, right, is just I did this myself to give a clear take. So, all of these, if there's harmonies on this, it's me layering recordings of myself here. That's part of how I intended to get to a bit of a cleaner, crisper take, not 12 of us raucously carrying on, but like, cleanly layered stuff. So, yeah, that's 'When the Neighbors.'
Michael: So, how does Bandcamp work? If you decided, all right, this is really the version I'd rather have on that original album, could you go back and replace the original 'When the Neighbors' with this or any of the other alts? Or does Bandcamp kind of lock you into whatever you released the first time?
Edwin Everhart: So, if you're like a regular user of Bandcamp, you can download an album, and it's not going to, you know, change the MP3s or .wav files or whatever that you've downloaded, right? It's not going to change what you've downloaded, but I can change what the original album is on my page. So yeah, in theory, if I wanted to put in a different version, I could scrub a previous thing, or I could add to the album too. Like, the original album has 20 tracks, tomorrow we could have 21 or 27. But I don't particularly feel a need to do that. You know, I don't feel bad about the original album at all. I just wanted to have one alternate take that gives it a little cleaner. You know what I mean? I think we had a great time, but there was a couple where, like, I want people to be able to see the vision of this song, and part of the vision is perfectly expressed by everybody blasting it out at a party, and then another part of it is, like, the arrangement, and it's a little harder to pick up on what the arrangement is if you don't have as spare of a take.
Michael: Okay. All right. So then, you have the second track is 'Burn, Burn.' This is a new one.
Edwin Everhart: Yeah. All the new ones are really simple and intended to be like you can pick it up on the spot, and located to that moment, that moment where you are outdoors at the fire with your neighbors. This one is addressed to the fire. It's just this very simple phrase that repeats, and then we have a layering harmony. So, we start with a low tone, we add a third above that, and we add, essentially, another third above that. I have this, you know, cute little men's chorus type of final cadence to it that I had fun stitching in there.
Michael: So then, we have 'Show Us Your Nose.'
Edwin Everhart: I have to say, I think this is, to my mind, the most successful track on the mini-album. Of course, I like 'When the Neighbors' very much, but 'Show Us Your Nose' is addressed to the groundhog; it's telling the groundhog to come out, you know, poke your nose out of the burrow and show us what's going to happen with the weather. I just had a lot of fun with this one. I think it's just the most cheerful energy and the most tuned into the original meaning of the holiday about the season change, and so on and so forth. So, it's just the most, like, chipper, little mood. I was very pleased with this one.
Michael: Then we have 'Of All the Big Rats.' This is an alternate version.
Edwin Everhart: So, 'Of All the Big Rats.' Turns out, I thought this was a Moondog original, but I was looking up, when did Moondog put this out? Because I wanted to put the year in the credit for the mini-album, and I couldn't find anything about Moondog doing it, I mean, I guess Moondog did a version of it. Of all the gay birds that I do see, the owl is by far the fairest to me,' et cetera. But the text and the tune apparently were documented by Thomas Ravenscroft in, like, the 1600s. So, this is not a Moondog original, to my surprise, and I apologize for the error to everyone out there. But it's amazing to have it, you know, 300 years older than Moondog! Anyway, this one had to go in the mini-album because, A) I wanted a cleaner take, right? But B) this was the biggest success at last year's Groundhog Day party. Like, I brought this out, had some neighbors and some colleagues and so on, come together at the fire, and like, I was like, 'Well, here are a couple of songs,' and they were like, 'Oh, let's do that one.' And we ended up, you know, arms around each other's shoulders, dancing back and forth in a circle doing this one. Everyone was so into it, it was great! So, I was like, okay, we have to put that on. Field tested in real life, you know.
Michael: So, then we have 'Mark Me Not.' This is another alternate.
Edwin Everhart: Okay, so 'Mark me Not,' I have so much fun with this. It's the only one where the Mud Painter arrives in the mini-album, sadly. Maybe more Mud Painter in the future. Mark Me Not,' so this tune was always challenging. It's got some very strange little harmony going on, especially in the chorus. I had gone on Wikipedia to the page that's like, 'Chord progressions,' you know, what are all the known chord progressions? Because my music theory folks out there will know you have your IV-V-I, you have your I-V-I, you have your I-IV-I. Yeah, yeah, your I-II-V-I. Okay, but the Wikipedia page for chord progressions has some out-there stuff, you guys. It has, like, you know, 50 different things listed, and some things that are like 'Oh yeah, the Neapolitan, blah, blah, blah,' and like, oh! What is this? So, I pulled one of those- I don't remember what it was, but I pulled one of those, like... Yeah, the chord progression is I-II-VII-VI-V... [chuckles] you know, some crazy sequence. And I was like, okay, I'm going to put this in. The upshot of that is that for 'Mark Me Not,' it's got this like attempt to do an early modern or pre-modern aesthetic musically, but then also it has these very twisty little harmonies, these very unexpected pitches. So, this one, most of all, needed a new, clean take to, like, what was that pitch supposed to be? What was that chord even supposed to be at that moment? So, I was very pleased to get a new, clean take on this. But, you know, of course, the other version on the full album is also a party.
Michael: Okay. And then we have 'Come Out.' This is the last new song.
Edwin Everhart: That's right. So, 'Come Out' is even more simple. There's basically not even a melody; it's just like a chant, right? It's just, like, a chant. And this is also the only one that's not acapella, there's a cymbal. I'm playing the cymbal in this, and I layer a few different- So, I've got the cymbal, and I played a few different ways that are layered in together here. But yeah, this is also addressed to the groundhog, telling it to come out. I think this one works for, you know, it's the dark on Groundhog Day eve at 7:00 p.m., or it's the dark in Punxsutawney at 4:00 a.m. Either I think, you know, you're sort of like, getting into a chant, you're getting into an elevated state or an alternate mind state, and you're trying to summon the groundhog through the séance, you know? [chuckles] It's very, very simple, but I had a lot of fun doing it.
Michael: Okay. And then finally, there's 'Deeper in Darkness.' That's also an alt.
Edwin Everhart: Yeah, yeah. So, 'Deeper in Darkness' is one of the ones that is... Another one that's my total- I guess the only one that's not my total original composition here is 'Of All the Big Rats,' actually. But 'Deeper in Darkness,' I'm very pleased with as a round composition, so I wanted to give that a nice, clean take as well, because it just, like, very nicely captures the feeling of all of us waiting, waiting for a new season to come. It's time! It's time for the season to change. It's time to see something different out there; it's time for all the darkness and all the cold to start to melt away. And so, we're very excited for that, and we're waiting, but we're also doing our bit, you know? Out here with our neighbors, standing together, out against the cold. So, it's capturing that feeling in sort of a reality of the Groundhog Day party and also metaphorically sort of where you are this time of year, maybe this time of your life, maybe this time in history, this feeling you might have. I'm just very pleased to be able to close on that one.
Michael: Okay, great. And did you mention, when did you record all of these?
Edwin Everhart: Yeah. So, I was sort of planning these throughout the year. I was planning these throughout last spring. It sort of like, came up to be November, December, and I was thinking, 'Okay, it's time to make this happen.' And I stitched together the last details on a couple, like I think 'Show Us Your Nose' probably did come together over a couple days, but the rest of them were just, like, the couple of new ones, they were just like bam, bam, bam, just all out. Just very quick to come up with. And then, I recorded all of these in one night, I think on December 16th or 17th, something like that, and just edited them and got them together and right out there, because I definitely wanted to get them out in advance of New Year to be able to share to folks. I feel like the time to send out your invitations for Groundhog Day, if not December 26th, is certainly, you know, January 2nd, you know, one or the other.
Michael: Yeah, it's always a challenge for me to figure out when to start hitting the Groundhog Day promotion, because people do not care that much until certainly after Christmas, but I think even New Year's. But then we start seeing a bit of an uptick in some interest.
Edwin Everhart: I would think it's such a welcome feeling in January to have something to look forward to, just on a very plain, very basic level. So, I hope that it continues to be successful in that way, [chuckles] or grow in success, let's say.
Michael: Okay, so you mentioned you had a Groundhog Day party last year. Do you have plans for this year? Are you going to be playing a bunch of these songs somewhere?
Edwin Everhart: Yeah, so we're going to do the same party basically. Last year, we did it, like, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., tried to close out before sunset, where I'm up at in western Massachusetts. But I think we're going to... This year, what did I say? I said like 4:00 to 6:00 or something, like, ostentatiously crossing over sunset into the darkness, the Groundhog Day Eve. Because it's Sunday this year, Groundhog Day itself is Monday, so it's a little tough to do. So, we're going to do a Sunday Groundhog Day Eve party, and it's going to be a similar deal, but I'm really trying to bring more folks out to it. This place where I'm doing this event is, like these park shelters we have in Pittsburgh, of course, they've got the little barbecue set up, right? They've got the, like, stick coming out of the ground, I don't know what it is, and then they've got the barbecue, you know, metal piece on top of that. So, you can have a fire there, and it's controlled and so on, but it does leave you chilly in the toes. It leaves you chilly in your legs and your feet because the fire starts at your hips, more or less. So, in the invitation, I've said 'Dress extremely warmly in your feet, legs and feet, and bring some firewood and snacks to share.' I'm bringing the songs, but I'm hoping that other people will start to bring songs too. You know, whatever they want to do, they can take these, adapt them, adapt something else, make up your own song right there on the spot. That's all in the spirit, I think.
Michael: Sounds great. Maybe you should set up, like, a little recording so you can have an even more live version of your songs.
Edwin Everhart: Oh yeah, that's great. We should get like a videographer in there and, you know, do a little vignette, do a little featurette.
Michael: Sounds good to me. So, I think you mentioned that some of your students had found your Groundhog Day album. Have any more come out and asked you about it? Do you think it's going to pick up as we get closer?
Edwin Everhart: Okay. So, this is the place where I'm going to go into a different direction. I am working in Massachusetts, and all these New England people are so, like, tight-lipped and stoic. They'll mention that they've seen something, that's the most I get out of them, right? They're very quiet, they're very docile basically, you know? They'll have seen something, but they won't tell me. So, it's different from New Jersey, it's different from Pennsylvania, where people are, like, a little more interactive. This New England quiet stuff is real, apparently. So no, I've seen it, but you know, it'll also be like, I'll talk with the students, they'll be like, 'Oh yeah, I saw this thing.' Maybe it'll come out of them. But no, I'm expecting to get some more reaction. The other thing I need to do, and I'll do this in the coming days, is I need to burn some CDs and send them to radio stations. Because, like I mentioned the last time I was on, there were at least, there was at least the one radio station that was just playing stuff from On Groundhog Day and a friend of mine happened to be listening and told me about it! They didn't contact me about it. But that was definitely because I mailed them a CD. So, everybody out there: if you want to get yourself on the radio, burn a CD, and mail it to radio stations, and they will put it up, it seems.
Michael: Okay. Aren't there, like, royalty concerns there? Shouldn't they be sending you some checks? A couple cents at least.
Edwin Everhart: Look, when I become a professional, when this becomes my job, then I'll start to worry about that. For now, you know, I'm perfectly happy to just get it out there.
Michael: Oh, yeah. No, I understand. I assumed any time somebody's playing something on the radio, that, in theory, they should actually be paying.
Edwin Everhart: I think that might be true, although I have to say, I don't understand the economics of radio, qua radio, in 2026. Like, how do you make money on radio these days? Beyond me. So, I'm cheering for everybody who's, you know, in that world.
Michael: All right, I mean, I think that's largely what I had. Is there anything else you want to mention? I'll definitely include both albums in the show notes of this episode as well.
Edwin Everhart: That'd be so wonderful. Well, I just want to say to everybody out there, you know, I hope you find your way to celebrate Groundhog Day. I hope you find your way to be kind and welcoming to all your neighbors, and see a new springtime coming. So, cheers to everybody, and let's find out what the groundhog has to say this year.
Michael: All right. Have a great Groundhog Day. Thanks again for talking with me.
Edwin Everhart: Yeah, likewise. Happy Groundhog Day to everybody out there when the time comes, and yeah, stay warm.
Michael: All right, thanks. And that's the interview. Thanks to Edwin Everhart for coming back to discuss his latest album. Make sure you check both the new mini-album Here Comes the Groundhog and the original, full-length Groundhog Day album On Groundhog Day out. Music for the show is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Show artwork is by Tom Mike Hill. Transcripts are provided by Aveline Malek. If you want to learn more about Groundhog Day, visit countdowntogroundhogday.com. Any feedback or voice messages about the show can be sent to podcast@countdowntogroundhogday.com. Talk to you next time.
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Transcribed by Aveline Malek.