1. |
Three Kings
03:11
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Three Kings (S. Sinner)
The soda king1 tore off his nose
Under a watchful beholder's blue eye2
The Thriller is gone, dangles over a ledge
A lost boy3 we'd hate to see fly
ABCs4 you learn with ease
But get them down as a child
Growing old in neverland5
You'll find your self on trial
Its not the snake oil
But the Side Show freaks
That cured your disease
On seeing the Pastry King's ghost6
The Prince baked too long until he
Asked himself the wrong question
and answered, “not to be”7
As to why the stone king fell8
From grace9, the roots reveal no clue
but pills are the devil with love to spare10
He took his hand, took his whole life too11
footnotes
1“King of Pop” i.e. Michael Jackson (MJ)
2 The Bluest Eye is a Toni Morrison book about a young African American woman who develops an inferiority complex about her eye and skin color.
3 Peter Pan’s friends were known as the Lost Boys, also around the same MJ’s Thriller album came out the movie “the Lost Boys” came out, like the Thriller video and the movie, and MJ’s later real life they all transformed into weird things.
4 :), “ABC as easy as 123. . . “
5 The name of the land in Peter Pan where you never grow old, and MJ’s home.
6 Hamlet was the son of the king of Denmark, People from Denmark are sometimes referred to as “Danish”
7 “to be or not to be, that is the question.” – Wm. Shakespeare
8 “King of Rock & Roll” Rock syn. Stone
9 Elvis’s home is called Graceland
10 “I’m the devil with love to spare” – from Elvis’ Viva Las Vegas
11 “Take my hand, take my whole life too.” – from Elvis’ Can’t Help Falling in Love
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2. |
Grease and Gears
03:18
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Grease & Gears (S. Sinner)
I got a brain all grease and gears
I got a mouth all full of nails
Such a gentleman do it with style
Gotta newfangled debtors' jail
And that nasty little bug that you didn't recognize
You know now baby that was me
I'm the reason your children are afraid of clowns
I'm the nothing you run from in dreams
I got a brain all grease and gears
I’m sewing up all your seems
Like it seems anymore like a normal night
You punctuate with shots and screams
I'll send my monkeys with flapping wings
For you and your little dog too
I'll snatch you up, mix up the parts
And put it all together with glue
Your guardian Angel I hog-tied her and
Painted her wingtips black
So you can trade your stroke of luck
For a yellow stripe down your back12
footnotes
12For this song generally, your guess is as good as mine.
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3. |
Hope
03:53
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Hope (S. Sinner)
The day came on like it was any other day
Radio carried a song while you and I we got dressed
I know we fought some yet I thought it turned out okay
Five years and no regrets except for the day I left
You turned me on to a world a different life
You turned me into I guess a better man
what grass broke the camel's back what needle sewed shut the eye
Last words you said to me cold blaming the world out there
You put me down so I don't want to be picked up again
You put me down so easily...
We used to be like two conjoined peas in pods
Seems to me at times you needed me as much
Held your words like Biblical therein lies the cause
We like umbilical cut my faith and hope and trust
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4. |
Toys Go Winding Down
04:09
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5. |
Knoxville Girl
03:23
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Knoxville Girl (traditional)
I met a little girl in Knoxville
A town we all know so well
And every Sunday evening
Out to her home I'd go
We went to take an evening walk
About a mile from town
I picked a stick up off the ground
And knocked that fair girl down
I took her by her golden curls
And I drug her 'round and 'round
I threw her into the river
That flows through this Knoxville town
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl
With the dark and roving eyes
Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl
You’ll never be my bride
Rolled and tumbled the whole night through
As troubles were for me
Like flames of hell around my bed
And in my eyes to see
I'm here to waste my life away
Down in this dirty old cell
Because I murdered that Knoxville girl
A girl I loved so well
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6. |
Lilies
03:31
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Lilies (S. Sinner)
Mother Mary14 couldn’t keep her safe
Not too kind to strangers in this place
Sinful voices from in and outside
Bluegrass looking black to her young eyes
Blood brothers and sisters in a room
Colley Hotel just to be alone
This village here will drown us if we stay
Get down to New Orleans come what may
Like 6 little birds and they set out just to fly
Flew into glass pure and see through to the eye
We only know for sure that a gun shot went off
And 4 lilies were picked and they were lying in a cross
At a rest stop near to Greenville , TN
Met a family there preaching of god’s peace
We’ll get a whole lot farther in their van
Forced them down the road with gun in hand
No one knows what if any plans were made
Drove them to Pane hollow down a ways
4 Witnesses lying in the road
6 friends flying on to Mexico
footnotes
14 Natasha Cornett's mother was named Madonna. Madonna, prior to the 1980s, was a term from old Italian meaning 'my lady' which often referred to depictions of the Mary, mother of Jesus of Nazareth of Christian fame. The fact of her mother's name may not come up in a quick summary of the murders, so with this note you will get the double entendre.
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7. |
Big House
04:00
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Big House Blues (K. Walford/S. Sinner)
Leaves fall down on the big house15 lawn
Dungeon light shines through the cracks in the walls
Men don't go where the sun don't shine
We're living on top of the devil's fault line
Cat caught a mouse in the closet over there
Something ain't right about the black bloody hair
The boy in the corner, I still haven't met
He's been talking all day but I ain't seen him yet16
Pickles and crazy cat17 go at it again
Possums gotta leave cause they don't pay rent
They’re making rock & roll in the dungeon and now
The neighbor's blasting beach boys cause the party's too loud
Standing by the road on the city side walk
The neighbor's got a shotgun and a cinder block
Don't you touch my flowers you'll get both of them barrels
And if that don't learn ya my cinder block will
Scarecrows looking at the city streets
Not so much birds are trying to eat our seeds but you
Never know who or what's coming your way
A mile from Magnolia just off Broadway18
15 This particular 'big house' was a large 5 bedroom house that Scott and some friends (including former Blackgrass guitarist Kevin Walford) lived in at one time in Knoxville, TN. It had a very creepy unfinished basement wherein things like polio braces were found.
16 Kevin wrote this line as far as I remember, so I'd have to double check, but I always thought it had a double meaning of the haunted type things we experienced in the house (mostly later found to be possums in the walls) and the fact that a lot of random people would crash at the house all the time.
17 Roommate Mike B. had a cat with a proper name, but we all called it crazy cat because all it did was mew and walk in circles 90% of the time. He got mad when we called her that.
18 Was not a great neighborhood at the time. We did literally have scarecrows in the yard that Kevin had welded.
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8. |
Wayfaring Stranger
04:13
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Wayfaring Stranger (Traditional)
I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger
Traveling through this world of woe
There ain't no sickness, toil, nor danger
In that bright land to which I go
I'm goin' there to see my father
Said he'd meet me when I come
I'm just goin' over jordan
I'm just goin' over home.
I know dark clouds gonna gather around me
I know my way be rough and steep
These beautiful fields lie just before me
Where god's redeemed their vigils keep
I'm goin' there to see my loved ones
Gone before me one by one
I'll soon be free these earthly trials
This body resting in your church yard
I'll drop this cross of self-denial
And I’ll go singing home to god
I'm goin' there to see my savior
To dwell with him no more to roam
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9. |
Tiny Ghost
04:22
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Tiny Ghost (S. Sinner)
Sonja where're you going with that baby in your arms?19
I see your thoughts on suicide, I see your thoughts on harm
Sonja what're you doing lay your baby by the road
The crying it won't ever stop, the blanket won't stop the cold
I'm sinking down deeper now, slip through the drain of this cell
Its not for my escaping but for sorrow that I'm so small
My thoughts go back I hear the cars drive by I hear them through the bars outside
I swear the wind it whispered my name I swear it mimicked a cry
Never was she convicted cause, she never made it to her trial
They found her in the Roane county jail where quietly she died
Whether she ceased to eat or her sugar dropped20, no one was too surprised
Some they say they seen a tiny ghost down by the highway side
I try to think you thought that I'd like Moses be found afloat
You and I God's children left helpless beside of the road
footnotes
19 This song was about the death of an infant in Roane County, TN. At the time, I was working as a social worker in the next county over and occasionally covered for the workers there. Because it involved a poor unattractive family, it never made national news. I could not actually find any articles as of 2014, though I admittedly can not recall the last name of the family.
20‘sugar’ is another name for diabetes mellitus in some parts of the U.S.
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10. |
Bright Smile (2006)
03:06
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Bright Smile (S. Sinner)
My coffee grows cold as I come back from
My ten step trip to make the CD switch
I could swear that a sip from my cup was gone
And the rim of it was cold as ice
Again I hear the hardwood floor
With descending creaks like smallish feet
Walk out and just like before
They're all asleep except for me
(With her) Her firefly eyes guarding me
Her voice comes faint on a chill
In the midnight moon through the trees
Her bright smile haunts me still21
A single flower magnolia each night
She leaves beside my bed. You see and
In this way she broke me in time
Now I can’t sleep, I only dream
In the southern summer’s tired heat
I don’t so much mind the chill
As the sunlight spills through the leaves
Her bright smile haunts me still
21 The last line, though not the melody, is from an old sailor song of the same name, 'Her bright smile haunts me still.'
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11. |
Grey Green
04:01
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Grey Green (M. Prince/S. Sinner)
Like the rain on the leaves
Like the fields after reap
Like the longing that wakens the trees
Like the moon and the flames all in your eyes
Like the dirt embracing the stones
Like the golden glow of our homes
Like the song of cold distant seas
Like the moon and the flames all in your eyes
Like the child yet to be born
Like the heart entangled by thorns
Like the rage will force me to pray
Like the moon and the flames all in your eyes
Like the lust that pulls you in
Still too young you learn to sin
And the morning that just wont begin
Like the moon and the flames all in your eyes
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12. |
Lazarus
05:23
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Lazarus (S. Sinner & Traditional)
Dives22 he called to the sheriff man, “one Lazarus lying out my window
He's a dangerous man. You know they're all dangerous men”
Sheriff called to the deputy, he said “go out and bring me Lazarus
Bring him dead or alive. Bring him dead or alive”23
Deputy he found Lazarus lying outside Dives' window
With dogs at his side to lick his sores only dogs at his side
Deputy called to Lazarus, he reach out to call them dogs off
With a .45. He pulled that .45
“Go out and bring me Lazarus”
footnotes
22'Dives' is often spoken of in churches as if it is a name, but actually is just an archaic term meaning 'Rich Man.'
23See generally, Luke 16:19–31 & an old work song 'Poor Lazarus'
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American Sinner Maryland
American Sinner is a rock n' roll stiletto switchblade dance along the edge of a knife that opens up for stabbing. They are not your run-of-the-mill musical tricksters in harlequin unitards holding bouquets of flowers behind their backs. No!...they got it all -manliness like Bowie and femininity like Tina Turner. They got it all so when these boys are randy to rock, you better let 'em. ... more
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