Contents Under Pressure

During my first week at college, I met Paul Dunlap when he wandered into my dorm room while I was playing guitar. We quickly discovered that our voices blended well. A few nights later, Filmore Strunk heard us singing, added a perfect third harmony, and just like that, the three of us had something special.

The next day, a freshman coordinator asked if my new band would perform in the freshman talent show. When she asked our name, I happened to read the warning on a can of shaving cream I was holding: "Contents Under Pressure." She loved it, and the name stuck.

The band soon became known for its harmonies and eclectic repertoire. After Dan Schlafer joined us, we expanded to four-part harmony, and I began writing original story songs for the group. This episode of “Noted Stories” includes three of the songs I wrote for Contents Under Pressure.

The first song, "In About 50 Years," was a cautionary tale I wrote in 1971. More than fifty years later, I'm still amazed by how relevant it feels. The second, "One Sunday Morning," imagined soldiers arresting a pastor, “Brother Jim,” during a church service. After one performance, a man insisted Russian soldiers would never be able to invade American churches. I replied, "That's why they're not Russian soldiers—they're American." Recently, I shared the song with the real Brother Jim Henry, who laughed and said, "That was kind of prophetic, wasn't it?"

Unfortunately, the band dissolved before we could perform another new song I'd written, "Uncle Anthony," about an aging rock guitarist still playing more than fifty years in the future. Back then it was science fiction. Today, it feels surprisingly close to home.

© 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:05

Welcome to Noted Stories, True and Tall Tales Set to Music. Thank you for joining us on this journey. I'm your host, David Ray Skinner. Every week we're gonna feature a couple of stories that are musical trips down someone's memory lane. Mostly mine, since I've been writing story songs for over fifty years. And that's because I was born in Nashville, Music City, USA, back in the 1950s. You know, back then the legend was that they handed a tiny little guitar to every newborn Nashville right there in the delivery room and expected them to grow up to be a musician. Well, that was probably the first of many a tall tale and family story I was told. So it seemed only fitting that I started adding music notes and melodies to these stories. Actually, I started writing songs when I was eight years old, so as you can imagine, I have quite a collection. And rather than have them sit buried on a shelf in dusty old music notebooks, I decided to launch this podcast to share them and the stories behind the stories. I've put together some musicians of all types to help me bring these stories to life and to song. Now, when I was 13 or 14 months old, I was introduced to my future musical partner, Johnny Armstrong. Our parents had been friends before the two of us were born, and after Johnny came along, the two of us were always together. Johnny and I both started taking piano lessons around the same time, and that would have been the late 50s or early 60s. As I have mentioned in previous episodes, the Beatles changed everything. So in 65, Johnny and I decided to put a garage band together. We called ourselves the UFOs, which we thought was a pretty cool name. However, among the young crowd that we ran with, there were more than a few eggheads, so the pushback was immediate. One of them said, UFOs are actually Swamp Gas. Swampgas, we said. Well, that was certainly a much better name. And so our band became Swampgas. Well, that name didn't go over well, so we eventually settled on the Rebellion, which in retrospect was not nearly as cool as Swamp Gas. Eventually the band evolved into a duo, Johnny and me. We didn't really have an official name. If one was really required, we'd use the prickly pear. The interesting thing though was Johnny and I began writing songs both separately and together. Some of them have held up through the years. Now others have faded into the past along with our cracked and faded happy face t-shirts. In addition to working on our songwriting, we also worked on Tight Harmonies. Then, when Crosby Steels and Nash came along, we realized that we were on the right track. I was a year older than Johnny, so when I graduated and went off to college, Johnny finished his senior year in high school. I ended up at Carson Newman, a Baptist college in East Tennessee's rolling foothills of the Smokies. Johnny had talked about attending the University of Tennessee after he graduated, and Knoxville was just 30 miles down the road, so I really thought we'd just take a little break until after he graduated. However, one night during my first week as a freshman, I was sitting on my dorm bed playing my acoustic when a fellow stuck his head in the door and asked if he could sit in. It was Paul Dunlap, and we discovered we had mutual musical tastes, and our voices blended well. A few nights later, another guy heard us harmonizing on a familiar tune, and suddenly he strode into the room with a perfect third card harmony. He introduced himself as Millard Fillmore Strunk Jr. from Wartburg, Tennessee. Uh yeah, sounds like a real name, doesn't it? Apparently, one of his Strunk ancestors was related to President Millard Fillmore, who was the first president to introduce the then highly controversial bathtub to the White House in 1850. Now Fillmore went by Fillmore, and once we realized that our Fillmore wasn't kidding about his name or his hometown, we discovered that the sound the three of us created was pure serendipity. The following afternoon, I went down to the campus student center and bookstore, and along with a few required books that I purchased, there was a little student care package that they were selling for a dollar. The men's version had toothpaste, roll-on deodorant, disposable razors, and shaving cream. I was busy pawing through the box when an upperclassman approached me on the sidewalk outside the student center. Are you David Ray Skinner? She asked. I was surprised that anyone knew my name, much less an upperclassman. When I confirmed that I was indeed David Ray Skinner, she said that she was one of the freshman coordinators and she was putting together a freshman talent show. She said that she had heard I was putting together a band. Wow. Word travels fast on a little Baptist campus. She asked if my band would play in the freshman talent show. Well, of course, I said, as the box of toiletry slipped from my hand and clattered to the sidewalk. Uh, what's the name of your band? She asked. I'm booking you. I reached down to keep the can of shaving cream from rolling on down the sidewalk, and when I grabbed it, the caution sticker on the side caught my eye. Contents under pressure, I read, not really realizing that I had said that out loud. Oh, cool, she said. Contents Under Pressure. What a great name. And that's how we became Contents Under Pressure. We played three songs at the talent show. Old Blue, a traditional song that was rearranged by Roger McGwynn for the 1969 album Dr. Birds and Mr. Hyde, Woodstock, using our own arrangement that split the difference between Crosby Still's Nash and Young's version and Joni Mitchell, the writer of the song's version. And lastly, we played Peggy Sue, a song by Buddy Holly that I had grown up with. However, this was 1970 and before the rediscovery of Buddy and his music. Contents quickly became known as an eclectic folk band. We covered everything from the Beatles If I Fell to the incredible string bands Big Ted to Nat King Cole's Honey, on which Paul Dunlap played Saks. In the spring of 1971, we added a fourth member, Dan Schlafer, and we began performing songs in true four-part harmony. At that point, I decided to take it further and start writing original songs for the band to play. Can we do that? Paul asked. The answer was a new direction for the music. I spent the summer of 1971 writing songs that would fit our sound. Actually, I should say, story songs that would fit our sound. Now, Carson Newman was known for its music department, and every spring it would send various choral groups out on a promotional tour. The music department decided that contents under pressure would show the fun side of the college's music. So they sent us on tour with their male chorus. We spent a week on the road traveling all over Tennessee and Georgia. We'd do three concerts a day, a morning concert as a morning high school assembly. Then we'd eat a quick lunch in the hosting high school's cafeteria before heading out to an afternoon assembly at another high school. Then we'd end the day at a Baptist church where after a covered dish supper, we'd perform a concert in the church's sanctuary. During the high school performances, the male chorus would open with a variety of choral songs, including Broadway hits. Then they'd break and we'd come on. After our set, the director would talk a little bit about Carson Newman's music program, and then the male chorus would close. Now the concerts at the Baptist churches had the same format, only the male chorus would sing hymns, and we'd sing, well, here it is, original songs with a provocative message. After the concerts, we would go home with the members of the church who had signed up to host the members of the entourage, two at a time. They'd also wake us up the next morning, feed us a quick breakfast, and get us back to the church to begin our next day of concerts. Now, this first song is one of those provocative songs that I wrote and we performed. When the director asked me to explain the meaning of the song, I told her it was a cautionary tale directed at people sitting in a comfortable pew. It was called In About 50 Years, and amazingly, she let us perform it. So now we've polished it up for your perusal. Here's In About 50 Years.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

I guess you're gonna speed up in the 50. There you go, the church and all the next buttons.

SPEAKER_04 12:59

I wrote the song in the summer of 1971, so it's been more than 50 years since its creation. Little did I know at over a half century later I'd still be pondering the lyrics I scribbled down back then. The next song in this week's Contents Under Pressure chapter is another song I wrote for those church concerts. Although no time frame is mentioned, it was obviously set in the future. The pastor in the story is Brother Jim. Not only did Jim rhyme with them, Brother Jim Henry had been the pastor of my Baptist church that I had attended as a teenager. In the song, soldiers break into the church during a service and arrest Brother Jim. Then one by one, as members of the congregation protest, they are arrested until at last the narrator singer is arrested. But listen for yourself. Here's one Sunday morning.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

It was so very strange to see thee when they came into our church this Sunday morning. They came with guns and they captured Brother Jim, telling him he should have listened to their warning.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

And we all sat instead, no one knew what to do.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

And someone said a prayer, and the soldiers took him too They took away our Bibles and they burned them one by one.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

They said that only communists had those They told us that the trial score the Christians had begun And from now on the church doors would be closed And we all went along Cause no one knew what to do until somebody held that's wrong And the soldiers took him Then they raised the flag and they told us all the need They said it was a flag that kept us free So we said the words But our legal allegiance wasn't real That freedom was a lie we could not see And they made us sing a song They told us what to do And if we didn't go along Then they would take us to Then they asked if we had anything to say So several of my friends got up and spoke After that the soldiers took my friends away And I told myself it had to be a joke I said it can't be true The soldiers said I lied And then they took me to After one of these church performances a member of the congregation who had been in attendance pulled me aside to comment on the song.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

Russia will never be able to invade America and come into our churches, he said. You're right, I said, that's why it's not Russian soldiers. Then who? he asked, genuinely confused. American soldiers, I said. That's just crazy, he scoffed. But again, it was the spring of 1972, over 50 years ago. Recently, I shared the song with Brother Jim Henry, my pastor from all those years ago. Brother Jim has long since retired, but he still preaches on a regular basis, and his messages are better than ever. I hope it was okay that I used your name, I told him. He laughed. That was kind of prophetic, wasn't it? He said. I think really my point was to show just the complacency of the average, comfortable pew Christian, and how we took freedom of religion for granted. At any rate, I suppose contents under pressure was a little ahead of its time, and we were a little bit of a fish out of water at our Little Baptist College. Did I mention that it was against school rules to dance on campus? Again, it was the early 70s, and while other protests against the war in Vietnam were springing up all across American campuses, we were protesting the ban on dancing. And this was over a decade before the 1984 Kevin Bacon Footloose movie with the same thing. Unfortunately, that protest led to the breakup of contents under pressure. Actually, the ban was collateral damage. One afternoon, this kid showed up at one of our band practices and asked Paul if he was going to participate in that evening's protest. What protest? Paul asked. Well, duh, the kid said. Protesting the ban on dancing on campus, of course. We're staging a food fight in the cafeteria. Well what's a food fight have to do with protesting the ban on dancing, we asked. Well, it'll get their attention, he said. Not interested, Paul said. I do not want to be involved. Oh, yeah, you're gonna be involved. My first vegetable's going toward your head, the kid said as he exited the room. Paul turned to us and laughed. Well, I guess I'll be wearing old dirty clothes, he said. Unfortunately, the dirty old shirt that Paul wore that night was a bright red corduroy shirt. Now the whole school had heard about the impending food fight. It was a small Baptist campus, remember, and you could feel the tension when you stepped into the college cafeteria that night. The administration had also heard about the planned protest, and somewhere, someone threw something and bedlam broke out. I really don't know if the kid who had warned Paul started it, but true to his word, he threw a mess of turnip greens at Paul's head. But Paul caught the glob mid-air and hurled it back. That and his bright red shirt was what the administrator's camera caught. And that was the end of Paul's time at Carson Newman, and for that matter, the end of Contents Under Pressure. Now, I had just written a song that we were working up, but we never got to perform it. Maybe I was going through some sort of sci-fi period at the time, but like the previous two songs, which look into the future, this one also did. The subject of this particular song was an aging rock star, specifically a lead guitarist circa 1972, and the setting of the song was 50 something years in the future. In other words, today.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Bring out your guitar. We always like to be playing. The children come and listen to him as their grandparents did. The music from his tele stirs along. As he plays, he watches them and dreams that he's once again a kid. But bedtime comes and soon they all are gone. And every night after supper time he sits out on his porch. And I can hear the neighborhood children say.

SPEAKER_04 24:37

Paul Dunlap became a middle school band teacher. In fact, just last year, one of his students, who has long since grown up, invited him and me to do a set at a local music festival, and it was a blast. Miller Fillmore Strong Jr. did not settle down in Wartburg, Tennessee. He went to a seminary and became an Episcopal priest, and later an internationally known North American Anglican priest. Dan Schlafer became a well-respected, award-winning high school football coach and later Tennessee State Educator. And I became a lonely podcaster. As from an old singing and songwriting partner, Johnny Armstrong, he's doing better than ever. He's still writing incredible songs in front of the Johnny Armstrong band. For more information about Noted Stories, you can check out our website, NotedStories.com, or DavidRaver.com. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next week.