Valhalla Campfire Songbook

The Okee Dokee Brothers

Joe Mailander and Justin Lansing, two friends from Minneapolis who've been making albums since their late twenties. Can You Canoe? (2012) won the Grammy for Best Children's Album after they paddled the entire Mississippi and wrote songs along the way. Through the Woods (2015) followed, made while hiking the Appalachian Trail. Saddle Up (2018) was the cowboy/horse-trail album. They are the perfect bridge between traditional folk and music for kids: real songwriting, real bluegrass instrumentation, no condescending adults-pretending-to-be-kids voice.

Why their songs are perfect for relearning guitar

  • Three-chord verses, three-chord choruses. Most songs use only the I, IV, V of a major key.
  • Strums are forgiving. They're played at moderate tempos with relaxed grooves, so a rusty right hand has time to catch up.
  • Singable melodies. You'll be teaching your kid by week two whether you mean to or not.
  • Real folk forms. When you've learned ten of these you'll have absorbed the I-IV-V structure that powers half the shanty book too.

The official chord PDFs

This is the most important link in the entire book:

okeedokee.org/music — every album has a "CHORDS" link. The Brothers themselves publish the official chord charts as PDFs.

The chord skeletons in this app are stripped down to chord progressions and section markers (so you can transpose them and learn structure). For full lyrics and the duo's exact chord voicings, download their PDFs and use them alongside this app. Treat their PDFs as the source of truth.

Tier 1 — Two- or three-chord trail songs

These are your first three weeks. Get them in your hands, sing them while you make dinner, sing them while you drive.

  1. Can You Canoe? — E major, three chords (E, A, B). The signature song. This is the test of whether you've got the I-IV-V locked.
  2. Through the Woods — G major, classic Carter-family strum.
  3. Jamboree — uptempo, three chords, perfect for a campfire crowd singalong.

Tier 2 — Four-chord and fingerpicked

Once Tier 1 is solid. Adds a vi or ii chord (relative minor / two chord), expanding your harmonic palette.

  1. Through the Woods (fingerpicked version) — same song, switch the right hand to Travis picking. Doubles your repertoire.
  2. Hope Machine — adds the relative minor.
  3. Echo — gentle fingerstyle.

Tier 3 — More movement, more storytelling

  1. Saddle Up — galloping rhythm, capo work.
  2. Walking with Spring — lyrical and reflective; good practice for singing while playing, which is the actual hard part.
  3. Haul Away Joe — yes, the Okee Dokee covered the traditional shanty on Saddle Up. This is your bridge into the shanty section.

How to teach these to a 7-year-old

The kid is the secondary learner here, but if your seven-year-old wants to participate:

  • Have him sing the chorus only at first. Verses are too dense for early sing-along.
  • Hand him a shaker or a tambourine. Rhythm participation comes before melodic participation.
  • Once he's got the choruses memorised, teach the harmonica part. Most Okee Dokee songs sit in keys (E, G, A, D) where a standard diatonic harmonica in C, D, or G can play the melody on the chorus. A C harp plays in C (1st position) or G (2nd position / blues position). A G harp plays in G or D.
  • Don't worry about teaching guitar yet. The kid section (Chapter 7) handles the path from harmonica to guitar.

A note on what you can and can't reproduce

The Okee Dokee Brothers' lyrics are copyrighted. The .cho files in this app contain only chord progressions and section markers — the structural skeleton of each song. To play them you'll want the official lyric/chord sheets from the Brothers' own website, or you can transcribe from listening to the recordings. Both are part of the long folk tradition of working out songs by ear.

This is not a knock on the duo — it's the opposite. They're an independent band who deserve to be paid; buy their albums on Bandcamp, see them live if they tour anywhere near you, and let your kid wear the t-shirt.