If you’re a fan of Groundhog Day but wish it weren’t mostly just a repeat of the same thing every single Feb. 2, or a replay of the movie, you might want to celebrate this season with the new album and new vision for the holiday by Edwin Everhart and friends.

The musician, well known for helping lead the Pittsburgh Labor Choir and the May Day Marching Band at Pittsburgh protests, parades and other community events, worked with 16 friends to create “On Groundhog Day,” which he describes in a news release as “a kaleidoscopic buffet that elevates and expands the legend of the rodent-centered holiday.”

Available for download as of this week on Bandcamp, the collection of 20 songs — half of them original pieces by Everhart — “takes the listener on a journey to a not-too-distant alternate universe where Groundhog Day thrives as a neighborhood festival, akin to Halloween — or Croatia’s Zvončari, Japan’s Setsubun and Germany’s Dachstag.”

The opening track, “When the Neighbors,” sets the stage:

Late in the winter, apart and a-splinter/

Come gather the neighbors in love and in cheer:/

When the neighbors gather round, and some from out of town/

the groundhog will soon be here.

The album is inspired, he says, by 1964’s “The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album,” mixing group sing-along, spoken word, pop, 18th-century German folk songs and church choir flavors (including a riff on the classic “Old Time Religion”) to create an “effervescent party mood.”

The Pittsburgh native joined May Day Marching Band in 2019, co-founded the Pittsburgh Labor Choir in 2020, and frequently can be heard playing and singing community-oriented, participatory music as a tool to help address social problems, including at rallies and other events of the striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette news workers, Starbucks workers and others.

Six Labor Choir choir friends participated in the recording: Tom Hoffman, Kane, James L, Tina Rogers, Addison Shroyer and Kira Yeversky.

As is his/their style, this new music is happy and hopeful. He writes in the liner notes, the album is “a dream of a world where we get together with our neighbors for festivals. That world where we have the time, energy, social connection and hospitality of spirit we want to have.”

He’s had tastes of that, growing up in Highland Park, where his family and the neighbors got together for Easter egg hunts and their own July 4 parades. As an adult, while working for Pittsburgh Public Schools, he attended and hosted some Groundhog Day parties, the main attraction of which was being with other people around a roaring outdoor fire against the winter’s chill. (There also was a giant groundhog costume at least once, though, as he captures in his cover art.)

“I’m just dreaming of more of that, please,” says the 38-year-old, whose approach to the holiday is much more whimsical than historical. His version includes a “a secondary trickster spirit” called “the Mud Painter.”

His imagination grew a handful of songs he pulled together for his party last year into this, which just may be the world’s only Groundhog Day album. It can be downloaded for just $2 or more.

The Ph.D.’s day job now is teaching in the anthropology department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. On his way there this weekend, he plans to visit Punxsutawney and maybe drop off some of this music, which he encourages people to sing with others at their own Groundhog Day parties. He’ll be hosting one in Massachusetts.

Get this album and all the lyrics and more of his music at https://edwineverhart.bandcamp.com/album/on-groundhog-day. He notes, “I am also putting up the songs one by one on my Youtube page, https://www.youtube.com/@edwinkeverhart, over the coming days.”

The traditional Punxsutawney celebration of Groundhog Day starts on Jan. 31 in the Jefferson County town about an 80-mile drive northeast of Pittsburgh and includes lots of live music, food trucks and other food, local beer, wine and spirits and more. Get all the details at https://punxsutawney.com/about-punxsutawney/groundhog-day/.

Everhart and friends’ album ends up at the same place as that event, with a track that’s a 2006 poem by Shirley S. Stevens titled “On Gobbler’s Knob.”

Five thousand strong, we twist and shout/

to circulate blood to our frozen toes,/

then dance “The Pennsylvania Polka,”/

bellow “Roll Out the Barrel” in the snow …

Edwin Everhart leads union members and supporters in “There Is Power in a Union” during a Downtown Pittsburgh rally for organizing Starbucks workers on Monday, March 4, 2024. (Steve Mellon/Pittsburgh Union Progress)

Bob, a feature writer and editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is currently on strike and serving as interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Contact him at bbatz@unionprogress.com.

Bob Batz Jr.

Bob, a feature writer and editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is currently on strike and serving as interim editor of the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Contact him at bbatz@unionprogress.com.