1. |
Step In Line
04:23
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Oh my dear you look so tired in the pale morning light
Chin hung around your chest and all those bags hanging from your eyes
Oh step in line, step in line
Oh step in time, step in time
The lines on the calendar are the bars on my cage
This train thunders through my weeks and all the years bulldoze through my dreams
We’ll find a way out of this prison baby with only the shirts upon our backs
Green pastures of plenty are waiting outside
My path is laid out there before me, and my back a sheet of steel
All my breaths now whistle warnings, blow me by, and stand you clear
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2. |
Rising Tide
04:10
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This disease and its gnashing teeth
It brings me to my knees makes me bow before God
I'm not proud that that's what it took
To make me believe what's in every good book
All these chemicals that made you sick
Wanna find the man who made them and show this to him
The long lonesome hallways and the ruined plans
The look in your eyes and the trembling hands
I tried to be patient like my mother but I can't be
We ran aground now honey sit tight and hope we'll float out on the rising tide
You said the breeze it feels oh so sweet
But you must be getting old 'cause it's something old folks say
As a measure of time, well, what good is age
It takes so many years to learn to hold on the days
They can pour all this money down the hole in your side
All the money on Wall Street, these tears can't dry
they've got plans for our pockets, cigarettes for our lungs
Poison for our babies and bullets for our guns
I am a cog in this machine that ruins lives of people unseen
I can't stop it but Lord let me try
It's a sad sad feeling comes to visit at night
I tried to be patient like my mother but I can't be
We ran aground now honey sit tight and hope we'll float out on the rising tide
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3. |
Tea Still Sweet
03:56
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THe long rows of cotton turn to soybeans and corn
And what was once gravel is asphalt
Well I think our vices our bound to transform
with each starry-eyed generation
The tea is still sweet and the crickets still sing
But termites they threaten foundations
The river takes a piece of the bank each year
The thicket advances each spring
The chess set misses its queen
We city folk long for our roots in the fields
But it’s such a long drive to the country
I barely find time just to eat with my family
Seems that it’s just too soon monday
The bible’s now the self-help section
With prices we’re willing to pay
The meaning of my resurrection
Is the fact that I get up every day
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4. |
Master Plan
04:25
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Wind is high where I”m going
i can’t say where I’ve been but
We are made out of clay
Shatter and start again
I’m not a threat to your freedom
I'm defending my own master plan
From the nightmares that used to bite at my heels
Before I learned how to dance
I don’t know and neither do you
YOu can’t see and neither can I
The landscape repeats, an old-fashioned cartoon
Still we continue to ride
Knee high by july
Something borrowed and something blue
All these rules fool the fools
I don’t need a frame to picture you
If you think that you’re at the helm of your destiny
That I hold the world in the palm of my hand
Just watch the mountain bow to the valley
See the ocean defined by the sand
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5. |
Caught Between the Times
06:14
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Listen to the underfunded high-speed rail, oh my my
Half speed thunder, really should run pell-mell to show you what your money buys
just another soldier left on second street
no commuter type will make our four eyes meet
Only thing left to take is a seat
and twenty dollar shines
I’m caught between the times
My angel fell off the nine when the doors blew back on the new high track
She came fluttering down into my boot black lord she looked a nervous wreck
Now good glory, I have a shelter friend
Everyone should have at least one buddy to defend
Somebody you shows up at the end
when you make it out alive
I’m caught between the times
twenty dollar shines
This is the new train / swing low / good or evil / I guess we’ll know
by the direction of your swing / and by what drives the thing
Will you pull up at our side / Dollar fifty and you open wide
Or will you promise leather seats / for thirty bucks a piece
This is a new train / swing low / good or evil / I guess we’ll know
by the direction of your swing / and by what drives the thing
Will you catch me in my back / have you jumped your fancy track
Were you offered a nod and a wink / a nod and a wink
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6. |
Parts & Labor
05:25
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In clothing sewn in crowded rooms
Eating food picked by weary bones
At table cleaned by tired feet
A meal served from fatigue
I act like it’s my birth right
To stumble round like a drunken fool
But some know this is hallowed ground
Don’t deserve our dirty boots
Well I wonder where those feet would go
Wonder what those hands would do
If they ever had a row to hoe and a moment to choose
Well move along, don’t care where you go
But we need this sidewalk clear
Loose parts in the back of some forgotten drawer
Is there anywhere on God’s green earth that I can pull my weight
A place for everyone and everyone in his place
I buit a house of mud and straw
It cracked in the freeze and thaw
So I retreat on my knees
To the city I withdraw
Someday the Lord will open all the doors
All the bells a-ringing true
A place at every table waiting there just for you
Well all we are is parts and labor
To this engine’s indifferent hum
Scrape the bottom of the barrell
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7. |
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Where I’m from the water table’s high
When April comes can’t find one basement dry
We call it an inconvenience
Then Tim Rose came to run this town
Stuck fifteen oil tanks deep in the ground
The paved over creeks started streaming
Storms keep coming rain or shine, no matter what i say or do
I can’t stop my hurried mind, cold on the shoulder and my eyes on you
I shacked up with the sunny kind, impending sense of doom
one must think of me satisfied with the push my rock back up forever blues
Sixty miles from the Chesapeake
Off the shore and somehow we still sprung a leak
Forgive my disbelief
Drop your buckets, boys we can’t be saved
My house sinks down into its early grave
No army corps engineering this time
Put a bridge on it, never say why
Put a bridge on it, big media fly by
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8. |
Go Darling
03:10
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here’s wrinkles in my shirt sleeves and dishes in the sink
And nothing but ham on bread for nigh on a week
You left your worn-out apron and took your brand new boots
In the suitcase I bought you for our first honeymoon
Go darling go, it’s a long lonesome road
But the fire in your heart, and the trouble it would start
Would burn this old house down
Round the time I lost your temper you stopped curling up your hair
You’d go out by the fence post just stand right there and stare
Well you ungrateful woman, you made me play the fool
Well I could teach you more than you will ever learn in school
Left the door wide open, cold air blowing in
I don’t bother to shut it, cause you’ll come back again
Well you ungrateful woman, by now you ought to know
You should swallow your pride my dear and come back home
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9. |
When I Was Your Age
04:55
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When I was your age
We would play by the side of the bay
Made forts from the driftwood and pies from the clay
My mother would smile from a beach chair all day
When I was your age
But child you can't get there anymore
The bridge washed away long ago
The house blew to splinters in a terrible storm
Now it is driftwood on faraway shores
Oh child you can't get there anymore
When I was your age
There was snow on the mountains as pure as the rain
There were creatures by the millions, many more than I can say
No ark to save them they all died away
When I was your age
A fairy tale to you it must seem
I suppose that it might as well be
But I want you to know all these things you'll never see
I want you to know that I'm sorry
I'm sorry
They told us it was coming, it was coming very soon
They told us it was coming, I did not know what to do
Didn't know what to do so I wrote this little tune
I wrote this little tune, a prayer for you
Oh God bless you
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10. |
Promised Land
03:12
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Once I was a fly, flew from room to room
Now I am a pen, write the story of a greater hand
I am a road and I'm headed for the promised land
We've all been told there's not enough for everyone
We guard what we hold dear with laws and with guns
Instead of all these walls, let's build the kingdom come
Used to knock on all the doors that shut us out
Now we build our own house
One with no walls that will shelter us all
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Letitia VanSant Baltimore, Maryland
Letitia VanSant is a singer-songwriter from Baltimore, Maryland.
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