
Artist: Phil Kane
Song Title: I Feel Like Dancing
Label: PhalKan Tunes
Release Date: 2025
Written Date: 2025
Genre: Americana, folk
Most of the songs I write and post here are usually about someone in my life, or something that happened in my life. This song was just something that came about while I was playing my guitar at the kitchen table. On the table was a newspaper with a headline “Rack Em Up.” The article was about how good playing pool is for your brain.
I Feel Like Dancing Written by: Phil Kane (2025) Rack 'em up, drink 'em down We're having a party, I got the next round There's a girl in the corner, nursing a dream I can help her with that, you know what I mean Chorus: I feel like dancing when she's by my side I feel like dancing, 'cause I can't fly I feel like dancing when she's by my side I feel like dancing, 'cause I can't fly Keep that juke box swinging and feeding it coin And you'll see me dancing and full of joy Let's raise another glass to living and life Let's raise another glass to living life Chorus
When I was thinking about posting this song, I didn’t think I would have much to say about it but a few days later I thought, why don’t I write about how much I love to dance, and some of my dancing adventures; because I can’t fly.
So here goes.
Mom and Dad – Dancers
My mom and dad were good dancers and almost every time they went out dancing, someone would come up to them and tell them how good they were. In the 70’s during the Disco era, they went out dancing a lot. They danced the first set, and basically had the dance floor to themselves because the other dancers hadn’t had enough to drink yet. They taught me the fox-trot, the Schottische and the polka at home.

Just a note as I’m writing this, I am grooving to “Good Rockin’ At Midnight”, by The Honeydrippers.
My dad had a bunch of disco songs on 45s and he would put all of them on the record player and the changer would go through the stack and they would dance all night long. This was a time when I was into rock and thought disco sucked.
After I turned 21, I went out with them to the disco with a girlfriend and we danced all night long and had a great time. Disco still sucked but it sure was fun to dance to.
I did the obligatory square dance in elementary school, but don’t remember if I liked it or not. I think not.
Dancing in Skykomish
I worked at the Skykomish Ranger District for the forest service for five summer seasons as a Forest Service employee, in various positions. This is where I honed my dancing skills.
There were many dance parties at people’s homes, including the infamous deck party in Mill Town. The hotel in town, Molly G’s, used to have live music now and then including the local band “Sargent Rock,” and of course, The Whistling Post tavern had their great juke box.
I had some great dance partners in Skykomish. Some were trained in dance, and I would mimic everyone I danced with and others on the dance floor. There was a elderly woman who used to do the landscaping at the Forest Service Ranger Station who, after dancing with me and seeing me dance at a party, used to call me Fred Astaire.
The Whistling Post tavern had an eclectic juke box, with many good dance songs. Used to dance to “In the Mood” by Glen Miller with it’s many false endings, in the back where the pool table and the juke box were. It was a big area, great for doing the polka to the “Beer Barrel Polka.”
While I was working on the trail crew for the Forest Service, once a week I used to go with my boss’s wife and high school daughter down to Everett, 50 miles away, to The Betty Spooner School of Dance and take a modern dance class, taught by Mike Jordan. After one dance class, I stayed for the ballet class. OMG, that was hard. The next day my muscles were so sore, and I never did that again.
Why Dance?
The Skykomish High School’s senior prom was coming up so a teacher there asked me and my boss’s wife to do a dance exhibition for the kids and teach them a few steps. We did the dance, and showed them a couple moves, then I took the boys aside and told them how cool dancing is, and how, I wasn’t a great story teller that can make a girl listen and laugh and want to be with me, but I can dance, and had the confidence to ask them to dance, and that seemed to work pretty good for me. I also told them the important thing is don’t worry about what anybody thinks just dance and have fun.
The Singing Trail Crew
One summer I worked on the trail crew with some great guys, my boss Steve (best boss ever and a very funny guy who played a mean saxophone), and Peaches (raised on a peach farm in the south, also a very funny man with many stories and a great singer). Peaches had a friend, Mitch, with Hawaiian ancestry, who came to visit and wound up working with us on the crew for a while.
Peaches taught us some southern songs and some gospel tunes, I taught them some Irish songs that I grew up with, and Mitch taught us a couple Hawaiian songs, including The Hukilau Song. So we sang a lot and were known as “the singing trail crew” (maybe just by me).
Our boss, Steve, had to take a day off on the day that 28 teenagers with the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) were going to be at our job site helping finish building a bridge over a creek on a trail. I was next in command, so I split the crew of YCC up between Peaches, Mitch, and me. I had twisted my ankle the day before and probably should have gone to the doctor that day but there I was using an ice axe as a cane and directing traffic, so to speak. We got a lot done and at the end of the day we were invited to the YCC kitchen to join them for steaks. So Peaches, Mitch, and I found some bark from some cedar poles we had stripped and made some “grass skirts” out of them. We went to the dinner and danced and sang the Hukilau – Hula dance, in the cedar/grass skirts for the group.
After the steaks, we went to a house party that was already in progress. I remember walking in to this small house with this crowded dance floor in the living room and seeing the prettiest girl in town dancing. I went right up to her and started dancing with her and we danced all night and became an item for the rest of that summer. I don’t remember the ankle bothering me, might of been the beer and the company helping me.
Square Dancing
One night, a bunch of us piled into a couple cars and drove over the pass to Leavenworth. We went to a grange hall there for square dancing. There were a lot of folks wearing square dance attire, while we were the scruffy temporary forest service workers. Not really sure how scruffy we were. I’m sure most of us took a shower and maybe even put on our nicest clothes. Anyway, it was so fun. We were taught a couple calls and I had a permanent smile on my face. I wondered why I never did that before. Ever since, I would try to do some square dancing or contra dancing at the end of a Folk Life Festival day.
One night in Skykomish we had a square dance at the fire hall. The local bluegrass players Ted and Cindy and band played, with Earl doing the calling. They did a waltz and I was dancing with someone and my boss was dancing with his daughter. I heard him telling her about the 123 beat of a waltz and I heard him say, “just listen to Lloyd’s feet shuffling along the floor, that’s the beat.” Lloyd was in his 80s, and a local pool legend. He was dancing and sure enough the sliding of his shoes on the floor was the perfect beat.
I Feel Like Dancing, Cause I Can’t Fly

My good friend Wendy and I have had many a good dance. One night we followed the local rock band down to Sultan. They played the song “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the MG’s. We went out on the dance floor and danced like we were angry with each other. It was so much fun, and we had this whole big dance floor to ourselves. There have been times in my life while I’m dancing, getting wild, that I think “what does everyone out there think of me” and I’m pretty sure I thought that that night, but I just say to my self, “Screw them, it doesn’t matter, just enjoy, have fun.”
During some winters after working summers for the Forest Service, I took classes at Everett Community College. I took some math, forestry, and some other requirements, but what I really liked was, music theory, yoga classes, and ballroom dancing. I mostly took yoga and dancing to meet girls. I learned the Viennese Waltz in the ballroom class and used the basics of that throughout my life, for all kinds of dancing and it has served me well.
Dancing under a simulated moonlight is a story that will probably wind up in a song, so you’ll have to wait for that, sorry.
After Skykomish
I left Skykomish in my 1966 Chevy Suburban Carryall fitted out for living in, with my dog Joss and a homemade tipi with lodge poles on top. I was headed to Libby, MT to do some tree thinning. I stopped at a small town either in ID or MT and went into this bar in the evening where a band from Humboldt county, CA, was playing. They were great, and played a mix of Reggae and the Grateful Dead, good dancing music. I spent the whole night dancing with the bands girl friends, who were barefoot and in flowing hippie skirts. I would go out once in a while to check on Joss and walk him.
I spent about two months in MT and then headed down to Cuba, NM for more tree thinning. After a month or so in NM, as I was bending down to cut a tree with my chain saw, I got a nasty pain in my back. I went to my boss that night and told him I was done with this hard labor and was heading home to get an education. I wound up going to school for cabinet making, got my certificate but never did work in a cabinet shop.
On my way back to Everett, I stopped to visit a friend in Durango, CO, who was going to Telluride, CO the next day to visit another friend, so I went with him. We all went to a bar in Telluride and the band that was playing was the same Humboldt county band I saw and danced to all night three or four months ago. I met a woman and we danced all night till the band finished. Then someone put on a record that was all polka’s so me and this woman danced the rest of the night to polkas. I called her the polka nut.
I used to go the Seattle Center to the Center House on Saturdays where they had a dance lesson of some kind at 7pm and then at 8pm a big band would play. I danced with many elderly women who were there. This is where I learned the two-step sometimes called the quick step. The two-step can be used for any genre of music and it’s fun to dance around the whole dance floor with it.
Bluegrass

I went to the Darrington Bluegrass Festival one year with a woman I was seeing. We danced bare-footed in the sawdust and got feet full of splinters. I ran into my friend Wendy and we were dancing to some bluegrass song like it was a swing dance, we had done this so-called swing dance (the Viennese Waltz) many times before and somehow we did an aerial, it’s called an “around the world” where I threw her around my back, and we nailed it. We had never practiced it and I’ve only done it since with my daughter when she was five years old.
Dirty Dancing
Wasn’t sure I was going to share this, but here it is. I went out dancing with a woman I worked with to a place I used to go to a lot, and we got a little carried away on the dance floor. The manager came out on the dance floor and asked us to please leave the dance floor. He said, we were being a little too risqué.
One night in a bar a song came on the juke box that I wanted to dance to. I went to a table with three attractive women and asked one of them to dance. She said, “this song’s not that great to dance to.” I told her it was (it was “Pink Houses”, by John Mellancamp). Then asked one of her friends, who shook her head, so I asked the other, and she said no thanks. So I went out to the dance floor and danced by myself. After a bit, all three of them came out and joined me.
My Favorite Dance Partner
Now I’m going to tell the story of how I met my wife, Donna.
I’ve written three different songs about this night. One I like better than the others but haven’t finished it yet.
I was sitting at a bar in a dance club in a Chinese Restaurant. Donna walked in wearing Levi’s and a beautiful smile. I was struck. It wasn’t long before she was on the dance floor, and every time I went over to ask her to dance someone had already asked her. So I asked another woman to dance and I danced over to Donna and asked her to “save a spot for me on her dance card.” After the song, she was sitting alone and I went up to her and got down on one knee and asked, “Will you marry me?” She said, “No.” So I asked, “Then, how about a dance?” and she said “Yes.” We pretty much danced the whole night, and afterwards she gave me her phone number (which she said she had never done before).
Not sure when I actually called her, but I found out she was going to be at the same bar the next Thursday. So I showed up that Thursday, and there was a dance competition that night, I talked her into joining the competition. I picked the song “Good Rockin’ At Midnight” by The Honeydrippers, a good swing, jump blues song. Donna didn’t even know the song and we hadn’t practiced, but we got 3rd place… out of three couples in the competition. We won $25 gift card, which we used at a different Chinese Restaurant for our first date.
Just a note – we got married in a Chinese Restaurant, but that’s another story (and song), maybe.
The 90s
Donna and I got married in ’92 and had a baby in ’93. In the 90s there a was a swing revival which actually started in ’89. By the time my daughter was about five, it seems like there were swing dances everywhere. We used to go to a senior center in Everett, where dance teachers would give a lesson and then a DJ would play discs from the bands that were popular at that time like: The Cherry Poppin Daddies, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and The Brian Setzer Orchestra. It was awesome and my daughter was totally in to it. We had a bunch of these discs and had some good family dances.
Like my mom and dad, people have come up to Donna and I after dancing, telling us how good we are.
Donna and I haven’t danced in a while, but we keep threatening to go out where there is usually a big band playing every Friday and Saturday.
Groovin’ in 2025
For the last three years on Wednesday’s, a couple friends would come over, a drummer and a bass player, and me on my electric guitar. We played in the garage, if it was not too cold or too hot. We called ourselves; “Dynamite Lunchbox.” sometimes the groove would get me dancing. We have since disbanded.
If you made it here to the end, I apologize and thank you for reading. I hope it was somewhat interesting, but if not, that’s okay too.
Copy this link to share with your friends.
https://philekane.com/i-feel-like-dancing/
Wow Phil-loved reading the history of your life! Loved that your parents were dancers and loved the story of how you and Donna met!
I liked your song too ❤️
Thanks Gina.
Great stories, Phil, you dancing dude! Almost nothing better than dancing.
I love the photos!
These stories and song are too good not to comment even though I never comment.
Thanks for sharing your memories and dusting off some of mine when we shared the dance floor.
Thanks, you mean the night we partied with our mom and dad and you and I danced all night with the two most beautiful women in Skykomish? Good night!
Hi Phil! Just wow. Really good to read this – Don
Thanks, Don.
Just read your story. Loved it. Rembering times when we all would party and dance the night away. GOOD times. Love your songs
Lue
Thanks Lue. I remember some of those loud all night dance parties that would keep us kids up.