Lyrics from THE PULL
All lyrics written by Kreg Viesselman. All unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable law.
copyright 2006, Kreg Viesselman

Aileen
The snowbirds return to their northerly towns
young girls are trading their virtues for gowns
And the traveling circus is hring clowns
But I'm settling down, Aileen

The frost has retreated from each threshold and pane
Summer winds reported on each feather and mane
And I'd be hitting the highway again
But for your love, Aileen

All the silver my pockets can hold
Is there for the taking, or so I've been told
But this time it looks like Judas is coming up with gold
All for your love, Aileen

Would you believe that a country boy like me
Would give up on a woman for a road that is free
If a country man you're looking for
A country man I'll be
All for your love, Aileen

Saturday Night
See the line out the doorway
They're all trying to get in
To the second-hand smoke
'round original sin
horns to get you loose
and booze to get you tight
ain't nothing like Saturday night

the peddlers are pushing
whatever you ask
women and watches
a lid of good grass
you could  spend all your money
just trying to get right
ain't nothing like Saturday night

Snake Oil Susie
She's doing her time
She must have been good
For to make her a crime
She turned on your nickel
'Til you knuckles went white
Ain't nothing like Saturday night

Every body's looking everywhere
For somebody to give them a thrill
If nobody finds you
In time to unbind you
Nobody probably will

Now it's shoulder to shoulder
And it's belly to back
And I'm looking to locate
All the love that I lack
Everything's grey now
That was black and white
Ain't nothing like Saturday night

Sorrow
Your guitar's hanging on the wall
In a hole in Aberdeen
With the dancing shoes and the brakeman's blues
And the dirty magazines
I've heard that thing a thousand times
By the glow of kerosene
And I guess I heard you gave it up
For the sake of coming clean

Sorrow, ain't it sorrow
Ain't is something, ain't it slow
From the getting up that mighty high
To the winding up that low
Sorrow, ain't it sorrow,
Ain't it something ain't it slow
You leave a trail
Of harm and hail
Everywhere you go

The steel wires stretch across the place
And they cut it all apart
Where the worthless words of the wagging tongues
They cut you to the heart
I always knew the steel was cold
And I figured it was sharp
Now the steel strings keep me tethered to
The highway and the harp

they're going to put you in the paper
if you're too small for the screen
they'll ride you blue
and when they're through
gonna turn you into glue
anyway

If your I's are always troubled
And your T's are double-crossed
The buzzards bound
To claim he found
A man that wasn't lost
You'll find me here
This time, next year
If I'm anywhere at all
Down in the birl
The swine and pearls
The girls and alcohol

High Times & Low Times
Hold me close, Ann Marie, The sun is going down
I appreciate your riding here
All the way from town
House has gone to ruins
The grass has gone to seed
And Helen's whistling 'Dixie' now,
And I suspect she will secede
High times and low times
Catch you unaware
High times and low times
Making awful strange affairs

Texas, Texas, both the sexes
Seem to find their way to you
He'll provide the wood tonight
If she supplies the screws
Sunset got the full moon drunk
But she came out, just the same
And Orion took young Virgo home
But soon forgot her name

High times and low times
Catch you unaware
High times and low times
Breeding awful ugly pairs

Peter, peter, hamburger eater
Had a wife and he used to beat her
In time she left the pumpkin patch
Went back to her home town
Over fed and oversexed
Christ, what will they think up next?
It's as creepy as a part time birthday clown

High times and low times
Catch you unaware
High times and low times
Are anything but rare

Cindy married Richard
Sonny married Cher
Liz Taylor married everyone
Nobody seems to care
And if you cruise the pawn shops
On the dirty boulevard
You'll find the wedding rings
And used bedsprings
Among the shotguns and guitars
High times and low times
Yes, I do declare!
High times and low times
They can happen anywhere

Hold me close Ann Marie, the sun is going down
I appreciate your riding here.all the way from town

(Everybody Throws You Away) Louise
Grass is turning brown
Cold hard hail's a-comin' down
And I'm leaning heavy south
In a northbound wind
With the dark November skies
And the dark bags hung beneath your eyes
No telling exactly where you've been

And it's a shame, it's a shame, it's a goddamned shame
Everybody throws you 'way Louise
It's a shame, it's a shame, it's a goddamned shame
Everybody throws you 'way Louise

Oh Louise, you pretty thing
The Blue tick bays
And the crickets sing
Every time the moon is up above
You can lead a horse to water
You can even raise that horse's daughter
But you can't force a selfish man to love

Oh, hungry eyed Louise
You've a tender heart
That no one sees
Like a baby bird
You hide it for your own
Would you show it to me now?
I'll try to pay you back some how
By seeing that you never sit alone

The Pull
Well, Oh well, Jezebel
The friends that you made
They're headed for hell
Lazy old fools
The sheep and the mules,
For doing it just like you tell

The sailors come
Between the storms
And they use you like a tool
They make promises now
When they're hungry some how
Just to break them when they're full

Well, oh well, Jezebel
There's a bird in your hand
And there's two in the well
No one knows why
The sparrow won't fly
And nobody blames you he fell

He came to you like a newborn calf
And he left you like a bull
And you lost your hold
On your heartstrings, I'm told
Before you felt the pull

The Pull, The Pull
Out on the end
You'd think I'd have learned
But down I descend
The Pull, The Pull
Back on the mend
Breaking my spirit
Again

Well, oh well, you ragged girl
I guess that you gave it a whirl
Squeezing so hard
On that broken old shard
It's like to turn into a pearl

The Busker
There's a cool breeze
'cross the southerly seas
I stay and I go and do as I please
My, my
what'll I do with you?
My, my

It's a long haul
From New York to St. Paul
The higher the hopes the further the fall

the Vietnam Vets
they're mending their nets
while the storm clouds pass up above
young girls leave a plume
of their mother's perfume
they're hungry for someone to love

there's a busker on fore street
playing for change
singing, 'Angie'
and 'People are Strange'

Northstar and the Drinking Gourd
I wound up on the wrong side of the tracks again
And it's plain enough to see
That it must've been
The railroad men
That moved them, 'cause I sweat it wasn't me
And I gave away all I owned
'least the things not nice enough to sell
now I'm drifting down the river heading somewhere fine
as far as I can tell
I thumbed a ride from a DJ, took me
Fifty miles or more the wrong way
I'll be damned
He turned around
Took me back and wasted half his day
He shifted gears, waved good-bye,
and wiped his sweaty brow upon his sleeve
People aren't as bad as the television
Makes them out to be
Lord, Lord we're headed toward
The North star and the Drinking Gourd
Where they're never sad and they're never bored
Perhaps they'll let us stay

All the way to Cardigan
just to ride the pauper's coach along the bay
appetite for the nightlife and constabulary end up in the way
you roll the old
Virginia Gold
'son, the good stuff's back from where you came'
and, 'a drifter's just a vagrant's just a bum
called by any other name'

Southern California's just a party thrown
With no one to surprise
And Hollywood can thank it's lucky stars
That LA is no prize
But every time
I turn to leave
She finds a reason good enough to stay
So I hang my hat one more time, California women
Tend to get their way

The Man Without a Care
One coat and one hat
One small blanket and one small mat
A little fish of flesh and fat
A tiny fire to cook him at and these alone
That's all the traveler keeps
Between the stars and moon
And the clay on which he sleeps

(Boubacar's Mandinka Lyrics translation:  'this life is unpredictable...this future is uncertain)

You thumb 'em west and you wave 'em east
The road to hell is good and greased
For the con man or the parish priest
Who talk the most and say the least
Or the politician sitting there
With a beer gut and receding hair
Or the guitar man without a care
There's experts living everywhere
Still you're alone

I laid an aster on the headstone
Of Tomas O'Crohan
Where the  heather and the nettles grow
Down in the sod, that's where we go
Just one short song with no refrains
Of work and kids and phones and planes
And love and hate and whips and chains
Our flesh will fail but the land remains
Alone

Now you thumb them east and you wave them west
You've itchy feet and a pounding chest
To cross the land you love the best
(O, a weary man that cannot rest!)
but there's folks out there you're bound to meet
in the sugar cane and the winter wheat
from the ghettos to the golden streets
a helping hand is hard to beat
when you're alone

Sharecroppers
Corn, corn, plenty of corn
The fields have devoured
The place I was born
The windows are broken
The curtains are torn
They're sending our labor away

Beans, beans, plenty of beans
Everyone here knows
What struggling means
Haggard old men
Riding rusty machines
They're sending our labor away

Greed, greed, plenty of greed
Company says
We can't hold over seed
How much of the pie
Does the company need?
They're sending our labor away

Honey of the Vine
She's playing tricks on you and me
And He's playing at the tracks
They're playing with themselves, I guess
While they fill each other's sacks
Saying, "if it ain't the Mexicans,
It's bound to be the blacks
With their Horses and Their Grasses
And their crystals and their cracks"

Sylvie, have you water?
Well, I reckon it's a sign
That you never should
Be trusted with
The whiskey or the wine
While the ghosts of all the miners
Are still trapped inside the mine
There'll be no relief
For the widow's grief
In the honey of the vine

The alley cats are raising hell tonight
Man, they never seem to tire
And slow but sure
What doves there were
Have all quit, or they've been fired
And the shepherds are all dead and gone
At least the ones that I admired
And as I feared
The music here
Isn't wanted or required

So I guess I'll move to Nashville
And play out in the street,
Grow my hair like Crystal Gayle
And I'll swear off eating meat
For the milking cow
And the laying hen
And the humble honey bee
Are the only true
Purveyors of
Any kind of charity

The winter's 'bout to lose its cool
And the wind's about to blow
And the turnip truck is leaving town
So it's time for me to go
And where that driver dumps me out
Well, heaven only knows
And the bones it breaks
Only makes
More dice and dominoes

Lonely People
Jesus Christ and Uncle Sam
The Dutch boy with the broken dam
And every hooker here to Birmingham
They're asking where you've been
So you said the prayers and you paid the dues
And fixed the things that you misused
Then you burned a trail just like a fuse
Again

The lips of lonely people
O, the promises they make
For every heart they comfort now
Another two will break
Sure, they gave your guitar back
But they'd broken all the strings
It's better not to promise anything

You've stumbled around the world before
And kept a foot in every door
That you might return once more
When looking for a friend
And left a love in every town
That you might hold next time around
But you feel that fuse is burning down again

The lips of lonely people
O, the promises they make
For every heart they comfort now
Another two will break
Cupid's locked up in the stir
And they've broken both his wings
It's better not to promise anything

You took all my unfinished songs
And you threw them in the yard
Now the cold concrete
Of easy street
Is getting mighty hard

There's a fool who stands in every crowd
Who goes and sings his thoughts out loud
But humility still hunts the proud
And it kills them in the end
You cannot trust in Providence
And not expect some kind of consequence
Better burn up all the evidence again

The lips of lonely people
O, the promises they make
For every heart they comfort now
Another two will break
Your tongue is flapping like a bird
But you never say a thing
It's better not to promise anything

Copyright 2006 Kreg Viesselman