The best parts of the 2007 comedy Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story are the songs Dan Bern wrote for actor John C. Reilly’s character. There’s the midget equal rights song “Let Me Hold You (Little Man)” with the lyrics: “You shout for me to put you down/ But I’m marching today for your cause/ I’m bangin’ the drum/ Your big day will come/ When they remake the Wizard of Oz.”

Even better is the Dylan knockoff “Royal Jelly,” in which Bern perfectly imitates the icon’s early singer/songwriter days while singing nonsensical lines like “mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum.” Bern – who comes to the Henry Miller Library this Friday and Saturday for a special songwriting workshop and a Saturday evening public performance – says he had a strategy when he sat down to write “Royal Jelly.”

“It was an assignment,” he says. “It was like ‘OK, he has a Dylan phase,’ so I just went into that head space of long run-on lines that you are not necessarily sure what they mean but they sound cool.”

This summer, Bern’s songs are also the standouts in the comedy Get Him to the Greek, where Russell Brand plays the part of debauched rocker Aldous Snow. Bern and his songwriting partner Mike Viola wrote Snow’s comeback single, the Oasis-like “Furry Walls” and the rowdy glam rock nugget “The Clap,” which begins with Snow singing: “We got the clap/ You got the clap/ We cook the rocks/ You took the smack/ Oh yeah.”

In addition to his soundtrack work, Bern is a prolific singer/songwriter whose songs include the jangly guitar pop of “Jane” and the building Dylanesque storm of “Black Tornado.”

For the Friday and Saturday songwriting workshop sessions at Henry Miller Library, Bern says attendees do not need to be accomplished musicians. “I would describe it as a yoga class for songwriting,” he says. “There’s no requirement that anyone has written a song to come in. They don’t have to play an instrument. A pen and paper would be helpful.”

DAN BERN will lead a songwriting workshop Friday, Aug 27, from 5pm to 8pm followed by a dinner party, and Saturday, Aug 28, from 10am to 5pm at the Henry Miller Library, located a quarter mile south of Nepenthe Restaurant on Highway 1, Big Sur. $125. 667-2574. Bern will also play a public show 7pm Saturday, Aug 28. $15. 667-2574.