1. |
Self-Made Man
01:53
|
|||
|
Beware the myth of the “self-made man”
It’s never that simple
Nobody ever does it alone
Abraham came from an origin unbelievably humble
This man needed a whole lot of help
He wouldn't have claimed he did it all by himself
Everybody needs somebody else
Beware the myth of the “self-made man”
It's never that simple
Nobody does it all on their own
Abraham certainly earned his place at the top of the list
but he still had plenty of help
He wouldn't have claimed he did it all by himself
|
||||
2. |
Purely Hypothetical
04:08
|
|||
|
What if you’d lived, Ann?
Where would we be then?
I bet the world woulda turned out different if you hadn’t left it
But when you died, ann
That almost killed him
You took a piece of Lincoln with you that never got filled in
Maybe if she was there to listen he wouldn’t have felt so alone
He might not have been as ambitious if he was happier at home
Maybe Abe would have stayed in a small town, laughing and growing old
With a different wife, different children, a future he could never know
It’s purely hypothetical
You were the first, Ann,
The first love he let in
After he lost his mom and sister he felt abandoned
An informal engagement
Called off by an illness
What if you lived instead of saying goodbye from a deathbed?
Maybe if Ann had gotten better he wouldn’t have studied law
He’d be locked down in his 20s, no time to get political
There’d be no one to find potential, no one to lift him up socially
A simple life in New Salem, something more conventional,
It’s purely hypothetical
They say he walked around talking to himself for days
They hid all of the razor blades
They say mister lincoln very nearly went insane
This wasn’t his only heartbreak, no…
Her death was one of many,
A long list of tragedies
A life that you probably wouldn’t wish on your enemy
And maybe it made no difference in the grand scheme of things
A man that was heading for greatness like it was destiny
But I'm a little skeptical,
it’s something that we’ll never know,
This is purely hypothetical
|
||||
3. |
Joshua Speed
03:10
|
|||
|
Let me tell you about my best friend
He was six foot three, a little older than me
For forty months we shared one bed
Above my store, he didn’t pay me rent
The blanket I had was too short for his legs
Beggars aren’t choosers, he didn’t complain
When the candle went out we could say anything
Neither of us had ever had a friend like that
In 1842 I left that town
My family in Louisville needed my help
I worried about breaking the news
My best friend had a tendency to get the blues
The letters I wrote were too short for his taste
We did what we could to stay close in those days
When the pen hit the paper we could say anything
Neither of us had ever had a friend like that
Neither of us found another after that
Politically on opposite sides
In 1860 I voted for the other guy
For almost twenty years our path was split:
Lincoln found greatness, Speed got rich
But life is too short, we mended that break
We never know what we have until it is too late
Remember back when we could say anything?
Neither of us had ever had a friend like that
Nobody but lincoln could make me laugh like that
|
||||
4. |
Fido
03:07
|
|||
|
Ain't nothing better than a yellow dog
This one followed a lanky lawyer home
Abe picked him up in ’55
Gave that labrador mutt a brand new life
There had been Joe and Honey running around before him
He was the last to play the role
Fido
When the family took a train to Washington
Fido stayed behind with the neighbor kids, Frank and John.
They took him back to that old house one more time
For the funeral in ’65
Pictures taken, strangers called his name and they plucked his hair for souvenirs
There goes Fido
I can’t help but wonder
If the President had a family dog living in the White House with him
Maybe Abe would have skipped that play to watch him chase his tail
In Springfield he was a monument
Until he met the same fate as his best friend
At the hand of a lunatic named Charlie Planck
This guy had a brain more rotten than the booze he drank
Fido jumped on the wrong man,
Planck had a knife in his hand, off into the great unknown
The farm out west where the green grass grows
Fido
|
||||
5. |
||||
|
Do you remember Elmer Ellsworth?
He met his maker in the first verse
Of an epic battle that we pass on
So we don't forget it, we won't forget him
Young friend of the President,
The colonel of a regiment,
He looked good in uniform
Pretty impressive for 24
Do you remember Elmer Ellsworth?
Early days in a new war
He led a march to the top floor
A Rebek flag on a flagpole
He couldn’t stand it, couldn’t let it fly
But on the way out someone was standing ready with a shotgun
One to the chest, lights out,
He died in a minute, the first minute
The 1st death in the civil war
But there would be many, so many more
From the beginning the war hit close to home
The first death hit Lincoln harder than most
Do you remember Elmer Ellsworth?
Make a battle cry from the words
Cut down in cold blood
He set an example for them to follow
A day later Lincoln sat down
Abe knew how to make a mother proud
From the White House with his own hand
He addressed it, sent it off
“My dear Sir and Madam, In the untimely loss of your noble son, our affliction here, is scarcely less than your own. So much of promised usefulness to one's country has rarely been so suddenly dashed, as in his fall.
My acquaintance with him began less than two years ago; and was as intimate as the disparity of our ages, and my engagements, would permit. I never heard him utter a profane word. he never forgot his parents.
In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory of my young friend, and your brave and early fallen child.
Yours,
Abraham Lincoln”
Do you remember Elmer Ellsworth?
He met his maker in the first verse
Of an epic battle that we pass on
So we don't forget it, we won't forget him
A funeral in the White House
The First Family among the crowd
One name, cried out,
We will remember Elmer Ellsworth?
Do you remember Elmer Ellsworth?
|
||||
6. |
||||
|
That Friday night in April
Booth put a bullet in a brain
One shot from a Derringer
From five inches away
A face that was familiar
A role that he chose to play
He jumped to the stage and broke a leg but managed to escape
He managed to say his line
I’m sure he’d rehearsed it many times
“Sic Semper Tyrannis”
The words lingered in the air
Booth fled from the city before the news was everywhere
Finally more famous than his brother,
More famous than his dad,
The only reason the family name is gonna last: Booth
He made it to Virginia without raising an alarm
Spent his last night in a barn writing in a notebook
To better explain what he had done
Now that judgment day had come
The army tracked him to a farmhouse
And he had nowhere to run
When they had the place surrounded Corbett fired off his gun
Booth didn’t become a martyr
There are no statues of the man
On the front porch of some poor farmer he died looking at his hands
“useless, useless…”
|
||||
7. |
Booth
02:41
|
|||
|
That Friday night in April
Booth put a bullet in a brain
One shot from a Derringer
From five inches away
A face that was familiar
A role that he chose to play
He jumped to the stage and broke a leg but managed to escape
He managed to say his line
I’m sure he’d rehearsed it many times
“Sic Semper Tyrannis”
The words lingered in the air
Booth fled from the city before the news was everywhere
Finally more famous than his brother,
More famous than his dad,
The only reason the family name is gonna last: Booth
He made it to Virginia without raising an alarm
Spent his last night in a barn writing in a notebook
To better explain what he had done
Now that judgment day had come
The army tracked him to a farmhouse
And he had nowhere to run
When they had the place surrounded Corbett fired off his gun
Booth didn’t become a martyr
There are no statues of the man
On the front porch of some poor farmer he died looking at his hands
“useless, useless…”
|
||||
8. |
||||
|
i shot the man that shot The Man
Did what I did, I prayed for the chance
Booth died on the porch gasping for air
Forgive me my Lord, it’s a burden I’ll bear
You could call me crazy, you wouldn’t be wrong
I've heard it said before
God will save me, providence guided my hand
But I pulled the trigger, my friends
An act of revenge for the President
A little more violence to bring a war to an end
I can’t keep a job, can’t deal with the fame
I sleep with my gun, there’s something wrong in my brain
Or o said the Judge, they put me in chains but i made my escape
From Topeka Insane Asylum
You could call it reckless, and I might agree but I still made history
God will save me, providence guided my hand
But I pulled the trigger, my friends
When I disappear you'll never hear from me again
In paranoid fear, I’m certain they marked me for death
A rogue pioneer, settle wherever i can
In my final years, I'll never write to my friends
Nobody will grieve when I’m dead
i shot the man that shot The Man
|
||||
9. |
Mary Surratt
03:41
|
|||
|
If her son had answered her letter,
If God had answered her prayer,
If she’d learned to lie a bit better,
If she hadn't hid behind that veil.
Maybe she would not be the first woman
To hang from government rope
When the Judge read out that verdict
She was certain that he had misspoke
Everybody knew that Mary was one of the conspirators
An unrepentant widow, a dedicated southerner,
And they made an example of her
If the new President had shown mercy
He said “she kept the nest that hatched the egg”
A victim of the national fury,
She could be standing on her own two legs
Instead she’s gonna be the first lady sentenced to die by the state
If her lawyers had done their duty maybe it wouldn't have gone down this way
Everybody knew that Mary was part of the conspiracy
She said ‘I merely hosted all the players with misdirected loyalty,
Please don’t make an example of me’
Who will look after her daughters?
They are doomed to carry her name
You would do that to a single mother?
It really is a bit profane
It’s not like she pulled the trigger
She let those boys in her house
They made their plan in a whisper
Altogether to the gallows now
And on that final morning they all suffer the consequence
Hang em as a warning to everyone they represent
Make an example of them
|
||||
10. |
||||
|
I saw you out most every day
at the Soldiers’ Home
Your lack of fanfare on display
at the Soldiers’ Home
25 calvary with sabers drawn,
it wasnt what you wanted but you went along
at the Soldiers’ Home
at the Soldiers’ Home
Missus Lincoln dressed in black
at the Soldiers’ Home
For every soul that won’t come back
at the Soldiers’ Home
Once when you passed on the avenue
I saw in your face what we’d done to you
at the Soldiers’ Home
at the Soldiers’ Home
The nation mourns a fallen friend
at the Soldiers’ Home
I search for words to comprehend
at the Soldiers’ Home
The one man we couldn’t afford to lose
O captain My Captain, who fills those shoes?
Putting our grief into poetry
But cold is the comfort of simile
at the Soldiers’ Home
at the Soldiers’ Home
|
||||
If you like Adam Tressler, you may also like:
One big ball of noisy and unrelenting, energetic and fuzz-splattered rock from an up-n-coming NorCal quartet.
go to album
24th Street Blues
by Tom Heyman
Tom Heyman documents life in San Francisco circa 2023, refusing to succumb to easy characterization & instead capturing the city’s nuance.
go to album
The Good Lyre - Songs Of John Wesley Harding
by John Wesley Harding
Tanya Donnelly, Wreckless Eric, Rosanne Cash, contribute cover versions of John Wesley Harding’s songs for this charitable compilation.
go to album
featured on Bandcamp Radio Nov 1, 2016
go to album
the happiest man on earth
by Michael VM
Rollicking roots music from Michael VM, “the happiest man on earth” is equal parts grit and soul.
go to album
Legends of These Lands Left to Live
by Ali Beletic
With her guitar front and center, Ali Beletic's raw ballads find beauty and romance in dusty wastelands.
go to album
Drag All the Lights Inside
by Nesting
From Seattle comes this tumultuous art rock record, full of intricate songs that alternately whisper and kick.
go to album
