Free

This song began as a joke when I was emailing Jeffrey Berlin. He asked me if I was "huffing in my shed?." This question set off the song and I tried to inhabit the soul of a junky with junky motives and eyes. Somehow as I was recording it I was writing it at the same time. During the stream of consciousness I manage to add lyrics about the murders that happened across the street that shocked the little village of Dixon. It's a weird dark little song that exists in an alternate universe to "Appleshine" This one is Mark Lewis's favorite.

Lyrics

Old Crow

Getting weird in the sticks huffin’ in a shed
A few more years of this and I'll surely be dead
A few more apples left for me to shine
And then it will be meet your maker time

Old crow old Crow old black crow in a tree
Won't you tell what you know tell me what you see?
Do you see a dark future as dark as your soul?
Or do you see a lovely land gilded in gold?

I was born by the sea but it did not hold me
Like the wide open spaces filled with possibility
Getting weird in the sticks no connection to the rest
Trying to do what's right is this just a test?

Black crow black crow a sittin’ in a tree
Won’t you tell me what you know tell me what you see
Do you see a dark future as dark as your soul?
Or do you see lovely land gilded in gold?

I can hear her squawkin’ and that's a good thing
Nothing’s more complicated than this old wedding ring
Getting weird in the sticks day by day
Vaguely know what I'm doing hardly know what to say
Voices crisper than the leaves and I know what they say
We are drifting we are drifting going far away

Black crow back crow are you an agent for the witch?
Is she plotting my demise? Stealing water from my ditch?

The jury found them all guilty for their monstrous crimes
Three life sentences still not enough time
All captured on a camera that they themselves installed
Well ain’t it ironic? Projected on the courtroom wall.

Getting weird in the sticks huffin’ in a shed
A few more years of this and I'll surely be dead
A few more apples left for me to shine
And then it will be meet your maker time

Old crow old Crow old black crow in a tree
Won't you tell what you know tell me what you see?
Do you see a dark future as dark as your soul? Or do you see a lovely land gilded in gold?