Woodrow by Tom Russell Lyric and Guitar Chords

Capo 5 Intro: G

When

people twist your words, Woodrow, ah, they’ll twist at every whim
It’s thugs that run the unions now and use your songs like hymns
Once, your music danced on women’s thighs and the arch of a hobo’s
brow-ow
Aw, Mrs. Guthrie look what they done to your brown-eyed baby now

Oh, the

trains leave every morning, some go east and some go west
And the clacking of the iron is the sound you love the best
It’s the great escape from railroad bulls and the Coney Island girls
Aw, Mrs. Guthrie, look what we done to your brown eyed boy with curls

Chorus:
Sing the

truth, scream it loud (2nd time: sing it loud)
Aw, Mrs. Guthrie, look what they done to your brown-eyed baby now
(2nd time: we done)

All those

boxcars full of Chinese junk, the caboose has been junk piled
And we’re all buying groceries now from men with crooked smiles
You were a drunken, wild misogyneer and your politics were crude
As you sat home writing nursery rhymes and drawing women nude

And

all those politicians breaths stink bad, be they left or be they
right
And the ones who play with rhetoric are not the ones to fight
Don’t go coming ’round here, Woodrow, they’ll stretch you from a rope
And your corpse won’t ever find a bar where a man can drink and smoke

Repeat Chorus

Instrumental (chorus)

Did you hear the screen door slam, Ma, Woodrow's gone again
He’s writin’ obscene letters now, the Feds might bring him in
But every song he ever wrote is hangin’ on the breeze
With the laundry in the Guthrie yard full of Huntington’s disease

So,

Woodrow, rest in peace, old pal, there ain’t nothin’ for you here
We’re in the scrub oak country now, the land of dread an’ fear
And whitey’s in the wood pile and the writing’s on the wall
But your ring of truth still echoes down the Greystone clinic hall

Repeat Chorus

So

here’s to all outsiders, all the ones who could not fit
The troubadour, the prisoners, the drunken Indian
Ah, the circus freaks, the wounded lovers will make it through somehow
Ah, Mrs. Guthrie, we are ridin’ blind with your brown eyed baby now

Sing the

truth scream it loud
Ah, Mrs. Guthrie, look what we done to your brown-eyed baby now
Sing the truth, scream it loud
Ah, Mrs. Guthrie, look what we done to your brown-eyed baby now