Small Potatoes

continued

obliquely into serious songs.

Prezioso tells of seeing a 1968 Chevrolet Impala — the model of car on which he learned to drive — bearing a historic-vehicle license plate, and then sings of how time flies but he can't get off the ground. Small Potatoes performs songs by other Chicago-area songwriters in addition to its own: Michael Smith's lovely "Crazy Mary," a song about the final act of self-expression of an elderly neighborhood eccentric, is introduced with an account of a visit to a Toilet Seat Art Museum, a neighborhood folk-art effort the duo encountered on a trip to San Antonio.

Not that humor is neglected in the songs themselves. Manning's "Knott" — "Think Abbott and Costello on Hee Haw," they say — brings together the three daughters of the Knott's Berry Farm clan, Shirley, Mayella Beatrice (May Bea), and Wynona (Wy), for an encounter with a traveling salesman. Manning apologizes in advance for the song,

which has enough twists of preposterous puns to become worthy of its Bud-and-Lou inspiration.