Woodrow
Tom Russell
Capo 5 Intro: G
C G C Em
When people twist your words, Woodrow, ah, they'll twist at every whim
G C G Em
It's thugs that run the unions now and use your songs like hymns
C G
Once, your music danced on women's thighs and the arch of a hobo's
Em D
brow-ow
C G C D G
Aw, Mrs. Guthrie look what they done to your brown-eyed baby now
C G C Em
Oh, the trains leave every morning, some go east and some go west
G C G Em
And the clacking of the iron is the sound you love the best
C G Em D
It's the great escape from railroad bulls and the Coney Island girls
C G C D G
Aw, Mrs. Guthrie, look what we done to your brown eyed boy with curls
Chorus:
Em G
Sing the truth, scream it loud (2nd time: sing it loud)
C G C D G
Aw, Mrs. Guthrie, look what they done to your brown-eyed baby now
(2nd time: we done)
C G C Em
All those boxcars full of Chinese junk, the caboose has been junk piled
G C G Em
And we're all buying groceries now from men with crooked smiles
C G Em D
You were a drunken, wild misogyneer and your politics were crude
C G C D G
As you sat home writing nursery rhymes and drawing women nude
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C G C
And all those politicians breaths stink bad, be they left or be they
Em
right
G C G Em
And the ones who play with rhetoric are not the ones to fight
C G Em D
Don't go coming 'round here, Woodrow, they'll stretch you from a rope
C G C D G
And your corpse won't ever find a bar where a man can drink and smoke
Repeat Chorus
Instrumental (chorus)
C G C Em
Did you hear the screen door slam, Ma, Woodrow's gone again
G C G Em
He's writin' obscene letters now, the Feds might bring him in
C G Em D
But every song he ever wrote is hangin' on the breeze
C G C D G
With the laundry in the Guthrie yard full of Huntington's disease
C G C Em
So, Woodrow, rest in peace, old pal, there ain't nothin' for you here
G C G Em
We're in the scrub oak country now, the land of dread an' fear
C G Em D
And whitey's in the wood pile and the writing's on the wall
C G C D G
But your ring of truth still echoes down the Greystone clinic hall
Repeat Chorus
C G C Em
So here's to all outsiders, all the ones who could not fit
G C G Em
The troubadour, the prisoners, the drunken Indian
C G Em D
Ah, the circus freaks, the wounded lovers will make it through somehow
C G C D G
Ah, Mrs. Guthrie, we are ridin' blind with your brown eyed baby now
Em G
Sing the truth scream it loud
C G C D G
Ah, Mrs. Guthrie, look what we done to your brown-eyed baby now
Em G
Sing the truth, scream it loud
C G C D G
Ah, Mrs. Guthrie, look what we done to your brown-eyed baby now
