Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams – Lyrics

Like Vietnam descending upon Walnut Street
Like a movie in Sensurround
As it interrupts the silence in the dead of night
Evergreen and breaking down

Insurance estimation from the freeze
Damage in the millions for the town’s economy
The power lines are down and it’s fifteen degrees

Exploding Trees
Limbs like boney fingers crashing through the ceiling

The Beauty Queen
Crushed beneath the pines on the frozen street

Exploding Trees
National disaster, my hometown’s on the TV

Patterson Hood – Jan.12, 2015 / Jan. 22, 2018 / Mar. 17-18, 2020
(Based on true events from Feb. 1994).

A Werewolf and a Girl

It was forty years ago when you came back to town
Picked you up at the Trailway’s and you kissed me on the mouth
Saw a movie set in London about a Werewolf and a girl
Tattoo You was on my stereo

You can do it if you feel like
I won’t call out or complain
I’ll just try to hold it just right
Even if there is some pain
You can do it if you feel like
I might feel a little too
But I’m warning in the morning
But I’m warning in the morning
I’ll be gone before you do

I was shaking, I was coughing, I was crying and forlorn
But I wouldn’t let that stop me I was sad before I’z born
And with that, you started laughing, said, it’s really just in time
And you need to put it in me before I go and change my mind

You can do it if you feel like
I won’t call out or complain
I’ll just try to hold it just right
Blame my sadness on the rain
You can do it if you feel like
I been feeling itchy too
All alone in the moonlight
All alone in the moonlight
What’s a broken girl to do?

When you said you didn’t mean it
It was just a little slip
of the tongue and just between us
It might happen once again
Once again in the moonlight
Once again out in the field
We could hold each other just right
We could hold each other just right
We could hold each other just right

Patterson Hood – Early Am, Aug 26, 2021, Back of bus headed North.

The Forks of Cypress

Twilight in the field and the rains came pouring down
Waited for your call then drove back into town
Blood red and golden leaves were falling to the ground
Cinematic wet streets, reflect the clouds

Wait until morning and I will meet you there
Even when it’s storming, there’s sunlight in your hair
I’ll bask within your splendor and your scent upon the air
Past the Forks of Cypress

We walk on the trails past the pond on fallen leaves
Where the panther saw his own reflection in my dreams
Watching us making love upon the cold hard ground
Buried in the red clay so freshly plowed

Threw my coat onto the back seat and I drove back into town
Past the Forks of Cypress and the road that wraps around
the bottomland and one lane bridge before the new highway
A new life built among the ghosts that paved the way

No one better ask me and I would never tell
Something so forbidden that I’ll carry it to hell
and burn it down there with me with lips that speak profane
of a love that burned as hot as my secret shame

Falls that lead to winters into springs and summers green
The one that shook me most, fertilized the ground serene
Hazel eyes and blood, beckoning to speak thy name

My secret shame that haunts me in my dream
Stalking like the panther in the soybean
Ghosts that haunt me still as my bones rest in the field
Just past the Forks of Cypress
Past the Forks of Cypress

© Patterson Hood – November/December 2017 / February 2018 / February 2023
(Portland, Oregon). For Bobbie Gentry.

Miss Coldiron’s Oldsmobile

Anne Coldiron’s Oldsmobile’s parked on the street
ten miles to a gallon and red velvet seats
Sissy’s gonna drive us anywhere Anne wants
she will run her errands and wash her clothes

There’s money in the bank Anne can’t touch at all
When she asks her brother, he don’t return her calls
She gets her allowance and time goes marching on
as another summer turns into fall. Turns into fall

Miss Coldiron’s house needs another coat of paint
the yard needs cutting and the gutter’s cleaned, but it will have to wait’
She says her air conditioner is poisoning the skies
Birds keep dropping dead in her yard

Anne Coldiron never married and she lives alone
with emphysema and Shirley Temple dolls
Shirley Temple dolls from her childhood long ago
still kept in their boxes in the closet. In the closet

Sometimes an ambulance pulled in her drive
Men in white gloves at the door while she hid inside
Cowering in the closet, she’d leave bound and tied
shock treatments to make the dead birds subside

Her brother’s at the country club every night till late
Black men in tuxedos pour his bourbon straight
He’s got the inheritance and paperwork that states
He’s the sole executor of the estate. The Coldiron estate

And when she’d ask for money he’d remind her of the times
The fumes would make the birds fall from the skies
Fall from the skies and the madness that implies
Lithium and tranquilizers. Tranquilizers

Miss Coldiron’s Oldsmobile is a Delta 88
So large it had a playground in the backseat
She couldn’t drive but Sissy took her everywhere
Anne and I would wait out in the parking lot

© Patterson Hood – December 28-29, 2017 (Living Room, Portland, Oregon).

The Pool House

The hole in the screen looking out onto the scene of a moonlit fight
As he stares himself down, his own reflection keeps telling him
The jig is up and the knot is tight

He hung himself outside the pool house on a Sunday night
How could his head tell him something so wrong and make it feel so right
How could his head tell him something so wrong and make it feel so right

The story that broke him had a gleam in its eyes
Sometimes there’s no coming back from your fears realized
Lips taste blood, shit got stirred
just another turd with his dreams deferred

Swimming back and forth with the pool light out
Naked in the water on a moonlit night
Naked in the water on a moonlit night

He held his breath as the water rose upon him
He held his breath and sank to the bottom
He held his breath and sank to the bottom

Steam rising up, the light of the moon conjuring his ghost
Messages deleted, phone underwater
Messages deleted, phone underwater
Messages deleted, phone underwater

Patterson Hood – March 22, 2020 / April 29, 2021.

The Van Pelt Parties

The Van Pelt Parties would go late into the night
Intellectuals and artists and socialites
Grownups getting wasted and eating appetizers
And me, I was maybe eight years old
Watching everyone line up at the punch bowl
Allegations of things about which I didn’t know yet

Artifacts and art filled up where they lived
Hardwood floors and antique rugs where the drinks were spilled
Punch and mistletoe, stolen kisses, stolen pills
I surmised, holding court alone upstairs
the complexities of dirty jokes and grown up love affairs
Oh the secrets that spill out amongst the Xmas cheer

By fourteen I had figured out that no one else would notice
if I helped myself to Xmas punch and quietly get loaded
That the jokes would all get funnier, mistakes less duly noted

Blurry lights out car windows heading home
at 2am, on Xmas Morning
2am Xmas Morning

The Van Pelt House, stood high upon the hill
A block from University, I guess it’s standing still
I haven’t been in a long time, the sands of time will kill you
The sands of time will kill you
now they’re gone and I have moved along
to punch bowls and drunken Xmas parties of my own
that are somehow less mysterious now that I am grown

Now I am grown with kids all my own
And the sins of my youth are making me atone
Those hands of time they kill and cut
I miss those Van Pelt Parties so much

© Patterson Hood – October 26, 2019 / December 15, 2020, Portland, Oregon.

Last Hope

Put your pants on Leroy, they’re coming round to get us
Down to our last hope that is almost squandered
They got us outnumbered, they better hope they don’t upset us
Cuz the last time we were down for the count we conquered

Remember the last time the riot got started
one took it on the chin and his brains got parted
and his head was bashed in and he was easily outsmarted
Broken hearted down in Last Hope

My mama raised me to say yes ma’am
And your mama raised you to not to be afraid
But things can get scary down in Birmingham
When our good manners start to slip away

Manners come handy when rest is well-earned
and your privates ain’t private and there’s so much to learn
Walking round in a circle or caught up in the ropes
Wrestling with your demons down in Last Hope

I’m a stickler for taking from all my mistakes
Not repeating the same ones that I’ve already made
Tired of making these payments on debts already paid
Broke and afraid down in Last Hope

So stick around friend, it only ends if we let it
Nothing left to lose and yet consumed with fear
Our best case scenario is trying to forget it
and the last man standing buys the beer.
The Last Man Standing buys the beer

Be a shame if it all came down to Jack and Diane
The cliches we learned to live with will still kill us in the end
Eighteen turned to sixty, over as it began
Too late to make a stand down in Last Hope

It’s stupid to think it could be any other way,
If life was fair i’d screw it up some way
Hanging on for dear life just to die some other day
And waste away down in Last Hope
Waste away…

Patterson Hood – Back Deck, Athens, Georgia. Aug. 19, 2014 / Dining room piano,
Portland, Oregon Jan. 2024.

At Safe Distance

At safe distance we watch it all transpire
Moving through existence on steel belted tires
Keep the doors all locked tight and tramp down your complaints
Keep some fog in your dialog to temper your disdain

Despite resistance our heroes get torn down
They cry out with persistence as they’re escorted out of town
And moved on to some distant sphere and left out all alone
to await some apology in the redemption zone

Everything gets complicated when you come back home
Buried truths get excavated by eyes now grown
Black and white is now shades of gray and you feel so alone
You wrap yourself in a cloak of mystery and your face is only shown
at safe distance

At safe distance staring down the past
An up close examination of something bold and vast
Bad and good and the ties of blood and the facts of where they stood
Facts displayed like a flag that waves goodbye

Some say nothing good can come from examining too close
Stare too long at the stone facade and the cracks will show
Your father’s eyes are now cold and tired his face so deeply lined
All the gold’s been pulled out of the mine

His warm embrace has a darker hue as the end comes into view
What once was pure through your childish eyes is complicated by the truth
What once was pure as a shot so sure has you longing for a time
when you could stand judging right and wrong through tight drawn blinds
at safe distance

Patterson Hood – July 18, 2015 – Parlor / December 15-16, 2017 – Living Room
(for Nelle).

Airplane Screams

My girl’s got an open grave, room for me she’s saving
Lying here while she rants and raves, roads to hell she’s paving
I don’t want to be put down
I don’t want you back around

My girl’s got a big black car, reserved parking spaces
from the church to the cemetery, through the lights she races
I don’t want to be pulled down
I don’t want you back in town

I don’t want it, I don’t need it
Put your shovel down, you ain’t caught me yet

My girl’s got these murky depths that she pulls me into
I try, but ain’t resisted yet, hoops I’m leaping though
Listening to your airplane screams
Listening to your airplane screams
Listening to your airplane screams
Listening to your airplane screams

Patterson Hood (1984, 1985, 1991, Florence, Alabama).

Pinocchio

Life’s a hard lesson that keeps piling on
Trying to learn which star to wish upon
Wish upon a star like Geppetto did
Turn this block of wood into a well-formed kid

Trying to figure out like a sad detective
Pushing out thoughts when your brain’s defective
Pushing out words from my ill-formed mouth
Trying to see the light when the sun hides out

Trying to see the light like Todd Rundgren’s song
Standing in the darkness trying to sing along
Raise our voice to heaven so our friends will hear
Then sing a little softer just to pull them near

Life’s a hard lesson but it’s always teaching
Arms ain’t long enough but I‘m always reaching
Reaching for a line that can save my soul
Spending all my favors just to pay my toll

Pay my toll, it’s getting kinda old
Searching for the truth like Pinocchio
It’s a whale of a tale with so many miles to go
but I get a little closer each day to my long-term goal

Trying to get a grip on my constant bitching
Heaven is a house with a modern kitchen
Heaven is the pace of a slow news day
A closer look at someone with a lot to say

A closer look at someone in the morning’s light
Yellow sunglasses to keep my mood just right
Devil’s in the details but we’ll see us through
Til my blue fairy makes my wish come true

I’ve learned that Heaven ain’t Pleasure Island
More to keeping love than just keeping on smiling
Truth can hurt a lot, but a lie destroys
Deep inside of every man is a real live boy

© Patterson Hood – Fall 2019, Portland, Oregon.