Working Girl Blues (10 page)

For the scars from an old love haven't quite healed enough

Chorus:

Yes the battle is over but healing takes time

Leaving old lovers, old memories behind

I know that I love him, need him so much

But the scars from an old love haven't quite healed enough

The battle is over and the victor has fled

Wounded and dying one lonely heart bled

Now love sounds her bugle playing love's old sweet song

While the scars from an old love haven't quite all gone

Repeat Chorus

 

Lost Patterns

This is one of my favorite songs that I've written, and possibly some of my best writing. Written in the late 1970s, it talks about working people and the hardships they go through while trying to cope with the pressures of life and trying to keep a marriage and home together.

The worn out linoleum has lost its pattern on the kitchen floor

And the woman that used to scrub it

Turned around and walked right out the door

The oil cloth on the table she'd wiped so many times it's almost gone

And the elbows leaning on it held the head of a man that drank alone

Every now and then his empty can would shatter the silence of the room

As it landed on her pretty face

Still smiling from the broken picture frame

For lately since she left him, he just sits at the kitchen table drinkin' beer

Staring at that worn linoleum

Trying to trace the lost patterns around his chair

Chorus:

Well it's hard luck hard times

And too many rainy days

Hard working people

Who just get by from pay to pay

Well it takes its toll upon us

We sometimes drive away the ones who care

From all the wearing and the tearing

The caring just walks right out the door

 

Scraps from Your Table

This is one of those little nasty smart-alecky songs that I like to write. I was in this affair in 1979 and felt I was getting shortchanged. I felt like I wasn't getting my fair share of attention because I thought he was still hung up on the past. So I decided to study the whole thing over and not rush to judgment. And if I could hang in there, it looked like this could get messy enough that I could get a few good songs out of it. So I proceeded with my study and here's where good judgment and unbiased opinions led me. Sometimes and probably all too often when people (generally men) want to end an affair, they are too insecure to just end it, wipe the slate clean, and begin anew. Oh no, that's not messy enough. Instead, they start another affair while they are still emotionally hung up on the first one. So they bring all that baggage and dump it in your lap and you spend the bulk of your time cleaning up and tripping over garbage that should have been cleaned up before they even started making eyes at you. And so we end up with all the leftovers, and that's how I got the material for “Scraps from Your Table.”

Scraps from your table are getting hard to take

Cold leftovers for which I wait

Crumb by crumb you give me some of what she throws away

Scraps from your table leave me hungrier each day

Chorus:

It's time to clean up the party's over now

After party favors leftover wine

I'm getting tired picking up the mess she makes of you

Scraps from your table I'm sending back with you

Cold, cold love warmed over too

Ain't good for nothing when she's done with you

I'm tired of getting handouts, standing in your line

For yesterday's bad news and leftover wine

Scraps from your table when I get my turn

Aren't sparks enough to light my fire

Much less make it burn

I'm starved out for lovin' what you never gave

Your see through lies are well disguised, but the menu's just the same

Repeat Chorus

 

Beyond the River Bend

This was the first song I tried to write in the Carter Family style. The Carters were great favorites in our home as I grew up. When we sang together around the house, we sang such songs as “Crying Holy,” “The Lover's Return,” “Midnight on the Stormy Deep,” “Wildwood Flower,” and “Can the Circle Be Unbroken.” I still sing “Keep On the Sunny Side” as an encore or sing-along, and have done so down through the years.

There's a path that leads back through my memory

And how often I've walked it these days

Where I find sweet peace among the flowers

On a grassy bank beyond the river bend

Chorus:

But it's only a memory, yes it's only a memory my friend

Yes it's only a memory I can never go back home again

Down by the river, down by the old river bend

Down by the river, a sweet fragrance of flowers winds

Oh it seems life's troubles and trials

Get harder and harder to mend

Oh how sweet it would be to sit down

On the grassy bank beyond the river bend

Repeat Chorus

 

Won't You Come and Sing for Me?

“Won't You Come and Sing for Me” was the first commercial recording of one of my songs that contained lyrics, music, and ideas that were entirely mine. I had previously recorded one of my songs on my first album,
Cowboy Jim,
but the idea came from my father. Although I wrote “Won't You Come and Sing for Me” in the early sixties, it sat on a Folkways Record shelf for eight years and wasn't released until 1973. Folkways had no plans to release the album at all until Rounder greased the wheels of competition by offering to buy it for potential release on that label.

Now this is the way the song came about. I'm really not religious, to tell the truth. However, when I was growing up, I was impressed by the love and
kindness that was openly shared and displayed among the brothers and sisters of the old Primitive Baptist church. It was that and the singing of the old songs that stayed in my memories down through the years (not the preaching). Particularly at the end of the service after they sang the parting song, they go around and shake hands and greet each other, humbling themselves before each other with smiles and hugs and invitations to go home with them and share a meal. This kind of humility and harmonious spirit of a common people inspired me to write this song as a tribute to that place and time tucked away in the corner of my memory.

I feel the shadows now upon me

And fair angels beyond me

Before I go dear Christian brothers

Won't you come and sing for me

Chorus:

Sing the hymns we sang together

That plain little church with the benches all worn

How dear to my heart how precious the moments

We stood shaking hands and singing the songs

My burdens heavy my way has grown weary

And I have traveled a road that was long

It would warm this old heart my brothers

If you'd come and sing one song

In my home beyond that dark river

Your dear faces no more I'll see

Until we meet where there's no more sad partings

Won't you come and sing for me

Repeat Chorus

 

Only the Lonely

When I wrote this song, I was experiencing a lot of loneliness. Many things were happening in my life on many fronts and I was not getting what I needed from those around me. I felt no one in the world could be as lonely as me. I felt an affinity with Lefty, Hank, George, and Kitty and others who wrote and sang such great lonesome songs. I felt too that I knew that lonely place inside of them that caused them to write such songs. I felt I'd been there. So when I began writing “Only the Lonely,” I had no idea in mind. It just started from a lonesome feeling and I began singing that feeling. “Only the lonely, lonely, lonely, only the lonely will know.” Although the song was very personal, I thought it might bring some comfort to those who experience feelings of loneliness in their lives from time to time, to know there are others out there who understand and share those feelings.

Chorus:

Only the lonely, lonely, lonely

Only the lonely will know

I've spent a lifetime searching for some kind

Of contentment here in my soul

Just a little sunshine, only sometimes

And a place to come in from the cold

Sing Chorus

Lost and lonely longing for only

One ray of hope in this dark well of time

Hearts that's forsaken left silently breaking

Shipwrecked and lost on life's stormy sea

Repeat Chorus

 

Rambling Woman