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Indigo Girls
Indigo Girls


Background information
Origin Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Genre(s) Folk-Rock
Years active 1985—present
Label(s) Epic Records
Hollywood Records
Vanguard Records
Associated acts Michael Stipe
Joan Baez
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Ferron
Website Website
Members
Amy Ray
Emily Saliers



Music World  →  Lyrics  →  I  →  Indigo Girls  →  Albums  →  Come On Now Social

Indigo Girls Album


Come On Now Social (1999)
1999
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13.
Sister (Reprise)
14.
. . .


Words and Music: Amy Ray
Note: This song is a reincarnation of Problem Child

Through the dustbowl through the debt
Grandma was a suffragette
Blacklisted for her publication
Blacklisted for my generation
Go, go, go

Raise your hands, raise your hands high
Don't take a seat don't stand aside
This time don't assume anything
Just go, go, go

So feed the fire and fan the flame
I know the kids can stand the rain
I know the kids are still upsetters
Cause rock is cool but the struggle is better
I said go, go, go

Raise your hands, raise your hands high
Don't take a seat don't stand aside
This time don't assume anything
This time don't assume anything
I said go, go, go

The truth is I was afraid . . .
. . .I felt inferior. . .
. . .I felt I excelled in competing with others
And I knew instantly that these people
Were not competing at all, that they were acting in a
Strange, powerful trance of movement together.
And I was filled with longing to act
With them and with the fear that I could not.

Did they tell you it was set in stone
And that you would end up alone
Use your years to psych you out
You're too old to care, they're too young to count
Did they tell you you would come undone
If you tried to touch the sun
Undermine the underground
You're too old to care they're too young to count
I said go, go, go

. . .


Words and Music: Emily Saliers

Kelly Mountain Road saw a heavy load
With a sagging heart and a break apart
Voices in me stood as thick as thieves
With no sympathy for the beggar's art
I have passed these pines bout a million times
Effortlessly
Now I grip the wheel fear is what I feel
At the slow unraveling of me

(Chorus):
You tell me it's temporary it's a matter of time
By God don't you think I know it's in my mind
It's right over left healing the then
I'll soon be to nothing but I don't know when

Well the way I flee on my crooked feet
Barn happy horse on a one-track course
The I self-despise cryin' out my eyes
Cause the happy trail led me to remorse
But the road is long and my song is gone
I blow empty in my cicada shell
If I saw my choice I might find my voice
But I don't know when and I just can't tell

(Chorus)

Deep behind my face is a safer place
But old gears are hitched tight to the gate
It's a daily grind waiting to unwind
Till I hear that click that unlocks my fate

(Chorus)

. . .


Words and Music: Amy Ray

Think I'll bag this trip for two pack it up for Kakadu
And honey it's not for the weather or the lack of loving you
I got all this in between something I could not foresee
And all the deals I've made don't matter if I can't just let you be

Gone again, it's gone again
There ain't no way that I'm gonna let this heart mend 
Gone again

Walked in King's Cross for awhile gave a junkie girl a smile
People trade it in for danger or the company of strangers
She said all her family is at the welfare agency
As she swindled my last twenty for a kiss and some poetry

Gone again it's gone again
There ain't no way that I'm gonna let this heart mend
Gone again

If I don't make Kakadu I'll be at the Rainbow Room
And I'll be courting some disaster with the Melbourne wrecking crew
Honey, all this is to say every dog don't got its day
If we take the love we're given and we throw it all away

Gone again it's gone again
There ain't no way that I'm gonna let this heart mend 
Gone again it's gone again
There ain't no way that I'm gonna let this heart mend
Gone again

. . .


Words and music: Emily Saliers

Trouble came around here
Here in the South we fix something to eat
Steam risin' up off the greenery and
We welcome the strangers we meet
Alien sick growing in these walls
Like moss in a crack that time made
I brush a guy in the airport whistling it's a small world after all
And the prices are higher but the kid's still selling lemonade

(Chorus):
Get to the point of it
Get to the sense of it
I'm in a hurry to get through it

Hurricane flag falppin' in a bad storm
Same color as the spider underneath my nail that bit me in my dream
And who would take out the Dominican Republic
And send God's sweet children floating down a poison stream
Secret society of conference rooms
I pledge my allegiance to the dollar
And when the clergy take a vote all the gays will pay again
Cause there's more than one kind of criminal white collar

(Chorus)

One day the war will stop
And we'll grow a peaceful crop
And a girl can get a wife
And we'll bring you back to life

Sacks of flour and rice or poker chips
Greasy palms of systems underhanding
And maybe we'll take a walk on Pluto
But be no closer to the understanding

(Chorus)

. . .


Words and Music:Amy Ray

Sister I'm heading out of Alabama so you better think fast
The wind is gonna pick me up now and the rain won't slack
I'm heading down to Georgia so don't lose track
Of where you've been and where you're going now, who you've seen and what they
lack
And why you come undone
Every time you go there
You come undone

I know your heart's in danger
And so is your life
I said you learn to trust a stranger
And stop and rest for the night
Set your sight up in the headlight
Well the moon won't be enough
And light the embers of another
And the night won't seem so rough
Sister

There was a bloody beast of burden on a dark Texas road (I wish I was a mother
with a baby at my breast)
A woman in the family way and a car that lost control (But I am just a poor
woman with a milk cow and a mess)
I'm studying the distance between the blanket and the gun (I wish I was a mother
with a baby at my breast
I got ten hours to Natchez and another ten home (But I am just a poor woman with
a milk cow and a mess)
Well I'm goin home

I know your heart's in danger 
And so is your life
I say learn to trust a stranger
And stop and rest for the night
Set your sight up in the headlight
The moon won't be enough
And light the embers of another
And the night won't seem so rough
Sister
Go ahead, I said come on
Yeah

I said it's trust that brought me here
And trust will bring me home

. . .


Words and Music: Emily Saliers

Honey pick the red corner shoes
The ones that hardly ever get used
I knelt in front of my whole collection
I'm picking you a special selection
On a no news is good news middle of mid year day
I feel no ill with time to kill I wanna play

Let's make peace tonight
The moon is bare and shining bright
Let's make peace tonight in a good time

Callin' on my good friends today
You know the drive's about an hour away
We'll be packing up a tent by the trees
We'll be wading in the river to our knees
Oh now love's been planted & we're checking out the yield
Two black dogs and a white one running through the field

Let's make peace tonight
The moon is bare and shining bright
Let's make peace tonight in a good time

We used to have some money but we spent it
So when we want to have it then we rent it
But we're cuttin' up the rug and I know you love me love me
And the best of everything here is free
Oh when things get messy then we tidy up the room
We'll be no stranger to the dustpan and the broom

Let's make peace tonight
The moon is bare and shining bright
Let's make peace tonight
The moon is bare and shining bright
Let's make peace tonight in a good time

. . .


Words and Music: Amy Ray

Oh, Ozilline, the moon is almost full
And you don't need a torchlight to see into these woods
Sister, bring the medicine to keep you from decline
But it's the waxing and the waning that's always on your mind

Oh, Ozilline, I feel for you
(Pleasure's what they double)
Oh, Ozilline, I feel for you
(If I could call you mine)

As soon as the corn's in, the deer will come to feed
And when the berry ripens, the bird will come to eat
Build by the river, it's pretty but you'll pay
'Cause the springtime brings the floodplain or your cutbank washes away

Oh, Ozilline, I feel for you
(Pleasure's what they double)
Oh, Ozilline, I feel for you
(If I could call you mine)

I had to put the dog down before I hit the road
I watched that sweet old life become a bag of bones
When your body's broken and your heart wants to give in
And you hear that hoot owl callin' just like she was a friend

Oh, Ozilline, I feel for you
(Pleasure's what they double)
Oh, Ozilline, I feel for you
(If I could call you mine)

I said, "Ozilline, she don't let you cry
When you ask where it hurts"
I said, "Ozilline, she don't let you cry
When you ask where it hurts"
She says, "What a blessed sky"

. . .


Words and Music: Emily Saliers

The girl's known trouble the wind's to blame
It blew her to Anytown, USA and that's my middle name
And where we go remains nameless
A motion picture alive and frameless

We are together finally
The dog caught up with the rabbit is laughing hysterically
And we are together you and me
[original]Yeah [my version]And we'll have the dog and the rabbit over for scones
and tea

Got that sadness twinkles like a witch
Conjure a love spell I'm gonna give up the five-year itch
Low to the ground high in the hollar
In any old February hot under the collar

And we are together finally
The dog caught up with the rabbit is laughing hysterically
And we are together you and me
Yeah

The setting sun at sadness beach
Just in view and out of reach
Resign myself to solitude 
When love is hard to get and rude
And though I said I did not care
It was way before we'd gotten there
Winded by the fruitless chase
Until I saw you face to face

Together finally
And the dog caught up with the rabbit is laughing hysterically
We are together you and me
Yeah yeah yeah

. . .


Words and Music: Emily Saliers

All of my days have been misspent
Stuffing out the sofa and the antenna's bent
Inside my heart's bursting out at the seams
I work for the impossible American dream

I got a job at the grocery store
Few bucks an hour not much more
The world comes in just to take things away
Eat it all up then they sleep until day

(chorus):
I try not to care I might lose my mind
Running round the same thing time after time
Only two things bound to soothe my soul
Cold beer and remote control

Once upon a time I was nobody's fool
Two jobs and showing up for school
I guess it comes apart so little by little
You don't know you're there until you're stuck in the middle

(chorus)

Sit down
The room is dark
The blurry grafitti on the benches
Across at the public park

The plastic splatter (the plastic splatter)
The haze is blue (the haze is blue)
All I want (want)
Is nothing to do (to do)

Cause it's a long walk to the bus stop
It's a long wait for the turning clock
A too tired car sitting up on the blocks
And things I put aside like that pile of rocks

(chorus)

Emily: Chorus Amy: Repeat first verse 
Cold beer and remote control (I guess it comes apart so little by little)
Cold beer and remote control (I guess it comes apart so little by little)

. . .


Words and Music: Amy Ray

You wear the cloth of finest lands
The touch of women the toil of hands
Undress me now before I bend
From the weight of everyman

When I'm walking through this world I need to hold your hand
Let me take you on this ride I hope you understand
I'm not asking for a compromise

You defend, exhume, begin again
It's the riddle of a skeleton
We're all diseased so count the coupe
I can't imagine stopping you

When I'm walking through this world I need to hold your hand
Let me take you on this ride I hope you understand
I'm not asking for a compromise

So the earth we scorch we breathe
Find some comfort on our knees
You find your worth in words that wind
Pleasures I don't comprehend

When I'm walking through this world I need to hold your hand
Let me take you on this ride I hope you understand
I'm not asking for a compromise

. . .


Words and Music: Emily Saliers

Andy, do you love me?
Do you think about it, will you say
Turning brushwood into blazes
Turning summer grass into hay
Turning sharply past the graveyard to the lakefront
With the black waves licking up the stones
To the swayed back screened in front porch
Who could ever stay the weight of flesh and bones

Andy, aren't you tired?
From the sun and rain and river soaking you
From the beer cans on your dashboard
And the bullet hole glass spiderweb staining your rearview
I have watched you watch an empty road
Is it only her upon which all of you's depending
To fill your twenty hour work day
While all the fences in this county still need mending

And in the night I do my checking
And fix the broken part with visions of rare beauty
But in my heart I know I'm second
Forever fixed in you pursuit it is my duty

Andy, will you toss me
A little scrap of something I can taste
Instead of dust from all the leaving
And the smell of summer lying here to waste
Under the burnt pyre of all the cast away
The tiny shoots will spring like questions will you take me
Out to the fenced field sprinkled with horses
Wild in resistance to the taming will you break me
Will you break me

. . .


Words and Music: Amy Ray

On the night they killed Faye Tucker
I was gambling away my last dime
Well I pulled down the lever and I sent up a prayer
That my luck would not be denied
My luck would not be denied

Roll out the head of Faye Tucker
And never you mind what they say
You may be reborn but it's all just for scorn
And that's what you'll take to the grave
That's what you'll take the grave

Well the minister wants you to live now
And the governor wants you to fry
And whatever it was that you thought might occur
They got something else on their minds
Yeah they got something else on their minds

If you live they gonna make you a campaigner
If you die they gonna make you a grave
Either way it goes down your life's not your own
And that's why killin' don't pay
That's why killin' don't pay

Yeeeee-heeeeee

I thought I heard the angel's bells
But they were just the hounds of hell
Yeah I thought I heard angel's bells
But they were just the hounds of hell

Tell me, what did you learn, Faye Tucker
What will you take from this world
Well mercy could prove us but nothing would move us
To rise above just being cruel
To rise above just being cruel

. . .

Sister (Reprise)

[No lyrics]

. . .


Words and Music: Emily Saliers

Welcome to why the church has died
In the heart of the exiled, in the kingdom of fate.
Who owns the land and keeps the commands,
And marries itself to the state.

Modern scribes write, "In Jesus Christ, everyone is free."
And the doors open wide to all straight men and women,
But they are not open to me.

Who is teaching kids to be soldiers?
To be marked by a plain white cross?
And we kill just a little to save a lot more,
The philosophy of loss.

And there are a few who would be true out of love,
And love is hard.
And don't think that our hands haven't shoveled the dirt,
Over their central American graveyards.

Doctors and witch hunters stripped you bare,
Left you nothing for your earthy sins.
Yeah but who made this noise? Just a bunch of boys.
And the one with the most toys wins.

And who is teaching kids to be gamblers?
Life is a coin toss.
And of course, what you give up is what you gain.
The philosophy of loss.

Whatever has happened to anyone else
Could happen to you and to me.
The end of my youth was the possible truth
That it all happens randomly.

So who is teaching kids to be leaders?

And the way that it is is meant to be.
The philosophy of loss.

. . .


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