- North Country Girl Blues
- Cross The River
- Talking Dead President Blues
- Graveyard Girls
- Early Morning, Upper West Side
- Ann Rutledge Blues
- 6th Avenue Blues
- Harlem Lights
- Strategery Blues
- Open Highway Blues
- Sleeping is a Sucker’s Game
This is a song about a girl from the North Country
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline and they sound like this…
She was born in a commune; she was raised in the Valley
She’s got lovers in the gutter; she breaks with b-boys in the alley
She got robbed in Columbia riding in a taxi all alone
She’s got government agents who’ve wiretapped her phone
But if you go up to Montreal where the snowflakes fall like pearls
Well, chances are that you won’t find my North Country Girl
Sometimes she’s just like a woman, sometimes she’s like a rolling stone
She’s been in too many moving vans to tell the driver to drive her home
She don’t have any furniture, uses someone else’s instead
Except fer a charred violin case she keeps underneath her bed
But she don’t look back to the ashes of where her apartment used to be
Cuz when yer a North Country Girl, you already got everything you need
She keeps her water in the kitchen, keeps her pride upon the shelf
She wants to go to Medgar Evers to further educate herself
She works with Arabs on the weekdays and with alcohol at night
She goes to Times Square on the weekends just to try to break up fights
But if you wanna see her, you better be prepared to wait
Cuz a North Country Girl always likes to sleep in late
When I got the worried blues and my mind ain’t there at all
I just leave her a voicemail and I wait fer her to call
Cuz I’d burn all my possessions just to see her one more time
And lie with her from dusk to dawn as her fingers trace my spine
When the headlines get so big they make yer brain begin to freeze
A North Country Girl can always set yer mind at ease
So if yer traveling in the North Country fair
Well, chances are that you won’t find my baby there
Cuz from the Far East countryside to Michigan prisoners on Death Row
She’s been as far in and out of America as anyone can go
She’s crossed the time zones and the hemispheres and the equators of the world
Cuz nothing can hold down a North Country Girl
Not even a Wolf!
She don’t ever go downtown
She likes Cambridge, she’s found
It has everything she needs
I live on the other side
The Charles it divides
Her neighborhood from me
But she don’t ever do anything
She don’t want to do
So I guess I’ll have to cross the river for you
She don’t ever question why
People have to die
She don’t look back a lot
She’s had nothing to receive
She’s had to overachieve
For everything she’s got
But she don’t ever say any words
She don’t think are true
She gets up in the morning
Goes to sleep in the morning too
I used to think that maybe I was all alone
But now I know it’s true
And I guess I’ll have to cross the river for you
She don’t have time for anything
Between bartending and selling shoes
So I guess I’ll have to cross the river for you
Well, I was feelin’ bad ’bout my country
So I went to the President Cemetery
I wanted to hear each one’s lament
About our current president
I found out who was buried in Grant’s Tomb
I was singing “Eternal Flame” when I found the grave of JFK
Well, I figured I’d start with number one
So I found the grave of George Washington
I said, “Hey there George, what’s up? What’s new?
What do you think of the current GW?”
He said, “I cannot tell a lie, it took me a lifetime to bring this country together
And it’s taken him less than six years to tear it apart again!”
Now that’s progress!
Well, after talkin’ to George, I got to thinkin’
What might I hear from Abraham Lincoln?
Said, “Abe, as our first Republican
What do you think of our current one?”
And he said, “Fourscore and seven years ago today
The Republican Party cared about African American people
Now they just sit back ’n watch ’em drown.”
I said, “Are you tryin’ to be literal?”
Well, I didn’t have walk very far
Before I found the grave of FDR
I said, “Please be frank, tell me how you feel
About this president’s New Deal–”
Said it was a bad deal
Said, “The way the White House manipulates fear in American culture ’n society today
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!”
Now that’s pretty fucking scary!
Well, I even talked to the presidents I never knew
Like Tippecanoe and
Tyler too
James K. Polk and Martin Van Buren
Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan
I talked to Grover Cleveland two non-consecutive times
With Benjamin Harrison in between
That’s a president joke!
Well, still not sure just what I had
I went to talk to the presidents who were really bad
I went to Andrew Johnson first
And then Harding and Nixon to see who was the worst
And Andrew Johnson said,
“I wasn’t such a bad president, I just divided the country!”
And Warren G. Harding said,
“I wasn’t such a bad president neither!
I just had a real corrupt administration – that’s all!”
And then Richard Nixon said, Richard Nixon, he was all like,
“I wasn’t such a bad president like other guys!
I just lied to the American people all the time!”
Well, all three sound pretty bad to me
Well, it didn’t take long fer me to see
That our current president had done all three
And with all the people killed and the money spent
I think we got our worst president
That is until Jeb runs in 2008
And then loses the election but gets put in the White House anyway
GOD SAVE AMERICA!
Stale cigarettes still linger on her lips in the morning
As her dimebag drifter servants fill the streets
He laughs and waits, holding his cards like they were scratchy 78s
With cancerous suicide bombers at their feet
Their eyes lock together ’cross a distant shore
As he pushes her hair back and the kicks their clothes to the floor
Only wanting more
And then they kiss like nothing before
Cuz Graveyard Girls are just so hard to please
They’re like cemetery angels in varying degrees
They make all the Tombstone Boys beg on their knees
I tellya, life ain’t eas’ when yer lovin’ Buddy Hackett’s niece
He was a State Street Rambler with his eyes set straight on the East Coast
A non-partisan painter with campaign pins on his jeans
And she could play it real cool with a Ziploc bag and a Zippo lighter
Fer a garage door grifting tragic birthday queen
He said that she had to get out of her place
After opening her door to find two 22s in her face
What a fucking disgrace!
He said, “You better quit this hustling chase…”
Refrain
And so the Tombstone Cowboy and the Lady in Red
They went walkin’ together in the land of the dead
And then the camerawoman saw them holding hands and said,
“Would you like to pose for me?
And for posterity?”
And though they hadn’t kissed since her bed
Red said, “I know just the spot up dead ahead…”
And so they crushed their confessions and they kissed like two killers in custody
Confined by the crowd on a stage that was all their own
And the ghosts in their eyes and their lives couldn’t’ve planned it any better
Two cemetery seekers enshrined on an old tombstone
And as the sun shone down on her crimson hair
It was like the whole world was created just to put them both there
And so the people stared
And the Cowboy and the Lady just didn’t care
Refrain
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Early Morning, Upper West Side
Early morning, Upper West Side staring at the buildings across the way
Odetta records on the floor by where my lover and I have laid
She says she hears the birds singing as my mind drifts at a steady pace
But she’s never looked more beautiful than when the sunrises over her face
From the dim light of the bathroom to the creaky boards in the hall
To the computer printout picture pinned up on the kitchen wall
But photographs do no justice, eluding her elegance and grace
Cuz she’s never looked more beautiful than when the sunrises over her face
You might say I’m too sentimental
A fool with nothing relevant to say
But until you’ve seen the sunrise
Reflected in her eyes
Well, you’d probably never understand me anyway
Well, I’ve seen her lying on the floor by the wineglass in the dark
And I’ve seen her after an autumn rain holding me closely in the park
And I’ve seen her up onstage, commanding every eye in the place
But she’s never looked more beautiful than when the sunrises over her face
Well, I dreamed you in a perfect story
Folklore passed as allegory
The heavens opened to reveal your glory
Alone but without you
Cuz all the words that I have found
Are buried with you in the ground
You died wearing yer wedding gown
Alone but without you
And I searched the taxicabs and the subway trains
The grocery stores that all look the same
The late-night diners with the neon names
And the skyscraper roofs and the sewage drains
The city is a monster that can’t be contained
By the lights as its body and the subway pulsing through its veins
And I just don’t know what to do
(What to do!)
With the Ann Rutledge blues
Well, I thought I saw you in an artist’s space
With a broken string and an angel’s grace
The spotlight chiseled out yer face
Alone but without you
By the next night I felt so divine
I was eating crackers by the Turpentine
The plastic cup, it held the wine
Alone but without you
I asked the guitarist busking in the subway halls
The security guards in the shopping malls
The city commissioner before his fall
And the man collapsed in a bathroom stall
But now Gatsby won’t write me back at all
And Dante won’t return my call
Refrain
You get a piece of history
Every time that I find you looking at me
We always just begin as friends
Until we go and we do it again…
I took all the money that I never gave
And poured it in yer open grave
And stood there till my soul got saved
Alone but without you
I turned yellow pages at the library
Spoke with drunken girls about astrology
I read yer fabricated history
Alone but without you
I found yer photograph, but yer face was blurred
A record you had made, but yer voice was slurred
A letter you had written in foreign words
And a lover you had loved, but you never deserved
I don’t know if I believe it, but there’s a story I’ve heard
That when you died on yer breast there landed a small white bird
Refrain
I met a girl in the East
Village at an open mic
She said, “I wish I could take you and do what I like…”
Cuz girls with boyfriends got hungry eyes that look so pretty
Girls with boyfriends are the only girls in New York City
At an Uptown bar, I was stirred but not shaken
Cuz every single girl who hit on me was taken
Refrain
Well, on Park Avenue, I met this pretty young thing
She said, “I’ll keep flirtin’ with ya, just don’t mind the ring…”
Refrain
Holding a girl in Harlem all through the night
Tryin’ to forget she’s dating three other guys
Refrain
Well, I know this girl down on 6th Avenue
She can sing, she can dance, she can prick-tease too!
Refrain
She don’t ever really go
Without leaving me
And there’s nothing she don’t know
Without deceiving me
She hardly ever cries
She can make it through the night
With eyes so wide on a November night
You can hold her tight when the air’s just right
Beneath the Harlem lights
When I look into her eyes
To see what I can see
A face I don’t recognize
Staring back at me
But if you tell me no
Then I’ve got no place to go
And all the late-night dives and the subway rides
Will add up to a number that we can’t divide
Between the Harlem lights
Though it’s been a year or so
Give or take a day
Since the window wouldn’t close
And the words you now can’t say
But I heard them once before
On a mattress on the floor
Like a savior’s plight in the depths of night
Filling my sights with a light so bright
Just like the Harlem lights
If you wanna start a war on foreign soil
Just use words like “freedom” instead of “oil”
Instead of “money” say “liberty”
I just don’t like yer strategery
We’re in Iraq fightin’ fer votin’ rights so people there can choose
But you stole yer first election and I think the next one too
You call fifty-one percent a vast majority
I just don’t like yer strategery
New Orleans water risin’ from a deadly hurricane
But yer somewhere on vacation, watching a football game
As people die from yer inactivity
I just don’t like yer strategery
Well, I don’t mean to offend you or to cause you disrespect
But I never thought yer dad could look so good in retrospect
Well, I kinda miss his presidentiary
I just don’t like yer strategery
Well, our Founding Fathers wanted to separate
Anything pertaining to the church and state
But yer always invoking Christianity
I just don’t like yer strategery
Well, I know you think yer moral and that yer an upright man
But its hard fer me to believe you with that blood all on yer hands
And with one lie you killed so many bodies
I just don’t like yer strategery
(In the morning!)
I just don’t like yer strategery
(In the evening!)
I just don’t like yer strategery
(In the White House!)
I just don’t like yer strategery
We hit the open highway like two hitchhikers in sin
Pilgrims with no progress chasin’ down the horizon
We don’t know where we’re goin’ and we don’t know where we’ve been
And there ain’t no roads to lead us home
It’s a rambler’s life we’re livin’; it’s a rambler’s life we chose
Breakfast in Boston, lunch down in the Poconos
The streets the only place fer desperados
And there ain’t no roads to lead us home
So I look at the roadmap and out the window of the door
You turn up the radio and sing along with more
Simon & Garfunkel songs I ain’t never heard before
And there ain’t no roads to lead us home
But now yer words they haunt me in ways that I can’t relate
In distant wonder, mystic reverie, and fate
I play them back again like a scratchy 78
And there ain’t no roads to lead us home
Oh, you could light yer cigarette on yer flame that burns inside
But now it can’t keep me warm, no matter how hard I try
I reach across my empty bed to where you used to lie
And there ain’t no roads to lead us home
Cuz we drove on through the mountains and we looked out on the sea
We saw the gardens and the lights of the city
The only place we couldn’t find was a place fer you and me
And there ain’t no roads to lead us home
To all the hipster princesses raisin’ Cane
They’re all goin’ downtown on a Brooklyn-bound train
They’re all lookin’ fer love, but they look in vain
And miss the cool boys in the East
Village
They’re all struttin’ past all the tough-guy bars
With acoustic guitars hidden in cases so hard
As if their denim jackets could make them a star
With every song that they rape and pillage
It was a Monday evening
And the crowd was deceivingly
Large for a small room that night
And we sat on the side
In the shadows that hide
Yer face as yer waiting to play
We are young, we are inspired
We got guitar-shaped heart desires
We got a long line of lovers who’ve never left us the same
We got outer prospects that are slim
Framed by a two-drink minimum
Yeah, we go through life knowin’ that sleeping is a sucker’s game
To all the day job sweethearts so bored at work
With buttoned-up hearts under half-buttoned shirts
Just cuttin’ off customers cold and curt
40 hours a week to get healthcare!
And all the retail Romeos workin’ day after day
Just starin’ off into space with nothing to say
They all act like they’re stoned, or maybe they are anyway
Put the book back where the shelf’s bare!
It was a Wednesday night
And we were feeling alright
Drinkin’ brew with the regular crew (regular crew!)
We sat slouched in the back
We were listening to Lach
And singing the words that we knew
Refrain
All lyrics (c) 2007