Valley of the Bones Album Lyrics

Hymn

My hippie mama didn’t make me go to church

So I find God in the fireflies and digging through the dirt

I can’t sit in no office chair, I’ve got grass stains on my shirt

My hippie mama didn’t make me go to church.

So I ain’t wasting time in a scratchy Sunday dress

I’ll be wearing thin this tattooed skin whatever time I’ve got left

Before I meet my maker I wanna make something of this mess

But I ain’t wasting time in a scratchy Sunday dress.

Chorus

Now I’m done calling it love when it’s just bruises on my thighs

And I’m done drinking to numb that lonely stepped on child

I am the olive leaf, I am her silver underside

I am the ember of God lights up the fireflies.

Just had to get out of my own way to find my home

It was right here in my guitar, been rubbing ‘gainst it all along

It didn’t take no lover to put me back inside my bones

Just had to get out of my own way to find my home.

Now I’m gonna swing this hammer like you ain’t never seen

I’ve got railroad ties and jasmine vines on the walls of my dreams

I’ve spent year apologizing for a heart that’s true and clean

Now I’m gonna swing this hammer like you ain’t never seen.

Chorus

Waffle House Song

I took back my busted heart in a counter seat at Waffle House

Deep fried on southbound I-95

Where the line cook was singing Travis Tritt on the jukebox

And the waitress called me honey pie.

I carried your memory three thousand miles

from Cheyenne to the Badlands to South Carolina

I ain't gonna carry an unwilling child

So I finished my hashbrowns, I told you goodbye.

Chorus

I need a smothered, scattered, covered, all the way love

No good time boys or cowboys, a boy ain't enough

I need a grown up man wearing big boy pants standing straight up

Giving me smothered, scattered, covered, all the way love.

I like my hot sauce with a couple scrambled eggs on top

I like my coffee with whiskey and cream

I like my man just like I like my breakfast

To fill up my plate, if you know what I mean.

I don't like this woman who's waiting by her telephone

for the ghost of a lover who ain't calling home

I can butter my waffles and hitch my trailer alone

I ain't gonna drag you behind me like a loveless old stone.

Chorus

Macon County

Macon County, do your recognize me?

I am older now and you’ve lost all your leaves

Church door’s still open, Sunday supper’s still free

There’s still holy muddy water in the Little Tennessee.

Yeah I married that boy and we moved down east

No one told us building up a life meant laying down our dreams

One day we looked like strangers who played ourselves on the TV

I pretended not to hear him call her name while he was making love to me.

A woman with choices, she’s a free bird

I was always stuck between a rock and who I’d hurt

So I left him real quiet, I just took my purse

Left a blank sheet of paper on the table, I couldn’t find the words.

Chorus

Macon County, you don’t feel like coming home

I’m dancing with my failure’s bones down Depot Street

When I was a kid I picked up river stones, rolled them over in my tiny palms and I’d wade in deep

Macon County, I ain’t letting you drown me

No Macon County, I ain’t letting you drown me.

I stay with my nephew, he got me a job

Stocking shelves on second shift pays decent starting off

I’ll work my way up to cashier, maybe manage the shop

Try to dredge a life up from the cracks of waiting out a clock.

Good days I talk to Joseph, he’s got kind eyes

Meets me in the parking lot of work with a warm Cheerwine

He don’t ask nothing from me and that’s what I like

I caught myself putting lipstick on last Friday just in case I smiled.

Chorus

Child

I didn’t name you, but I hoped

You’d have your daddy’s sense of rhythm

Your Momma’s dancing shoes, you know,

Just got wet cement and good intentions in them.

Outside I look just like the living

I shuffle through the chores the living do

Inside I’m gutted. I am grieving

A tiny unnamed someone shaped like you.

Chorus

I am not a doctor

I am not a man of god.

I am a woman who has gotten some things wrong

And kept on trying.

Tonight I am a mother

I am barefoot in my yard

I am burying the dream

Of the grass stained, dancing feet

Of my child.

I tried going to the ocean

She wrote in foam what I already know

Being human is dancing on a nickel’s edge

With equal measures holding on and letting go

And so it’s Tuesday,

so I’m standing in the grocery check-out line

and life continues like it used to, across the highway

The school kids kick a red ball at the sky.

Chorus

If God’s a woman, may she lift

This empty from my insides while I rest

May she hold me in the magnolia of her breast

Where I’m a child again.

Saint Carrie of the Storms

Folks say you don’t choose your family

I say that I chose you

When we were just the light and dust of our parents’ ideaI caught that pebble you threw

Kept it in my pocket these 38 years

Lord knows I’ve worried it smooth

Through empty apartments, funerals and babies

You’re this crazy family’s sweet, crazy glue.

Chorus

When I was 9 years old I got caught in a real bad undertow

You held onto me like breathing and you swam us into shore

Honey you can swim like that again, these mean waters that you’re in

They ain’t as strong as my Saint Carrie of the Storms.

There was a little snowy owl with real feathers you loved to hang on our Jewish Christmas tree

One year I felt compelled to steal all your thunder I hung him right where you could see

You punched me so hard I saw all the Jewish Christmas stars

My nose bled all over your new Nikes

And I learned then you swing like the smallest things matter

And I’m still swinging like my big sister taught me.

Chorus

Now you take after Daddy, I take after momma

We both sound like each other on the phone

Momma calls you Day, she calls me Night

And now you’ve got a daughter of your own

She’s feisty and fragile like a fuchsia azalea

She rolls her eyes just like your little clone

And I see in the fierce way you love her like breathing

You’re gonna teach her to swim us all home

Chorus

2 Broke Kids

I married you ‘neath a black walnut tree

You were twenty three, I was nearly twenty five

I held a bouquet of wilted peonies

You sweat right through your borrowed suit and both our mamas cried.

Just two broke kids with the luxury of hoping

That love alone was big enough to keep us floating

But love’s an angry child’s drawing of the ocean

We got scribbled off the page.

We filled our years with homemade birthday gifts and grocery lists

We carried moving boxes, guitars and our innocence

Now every song we’re ever gonna write will end like this

Its just the chords that change.

Chorus

I married you in the white magnolia fire of June

When everything just wants to bloom

And our feral hearts were green

It wasn’t a mistake, my dear, I will not blame our youth

I just learned how best to love you

in our love’s unraveling.

Now I pay my cover, stand in the crowd just like your fans do

The front row hippies dance dusty circles and sing along with you

They’ve got no idea how much hurtin I had to do

To be the girl in your songs

But I won’t worry about you long as I know you’re singing

And busting guitar strings as fast as you can string them

Darlin, I never heard those bells of Marshall ringing

The way they ring for you

The way they ring for you.

Chorus

I’ll See Your Crazy and Raise You Mine

It was right there in the parking lot

Between Bojangles and the Pawn and Gun shop

We started kissing and we haven’t stopped

For 23 miserable years

I wore your ex-wife’s wedding dress

I dyed it purple like an easter egg

We said “I do,” you lit your cigarette

Right next to Aunt Fannie’s oxygen tank

Chorus

It was like fireworks baby

We’re our own damn fourth of July

I just keep seeing your crazy and raising you mine

When the kids were off with their own lives

You said “Hey darlin, why don’t we downsize?”

You got me drunk and sold our double wide

For this top-of-the-line estate sale RV

Now you’re on the throne while I brush my teeth

And in the mirror I see you smiling at me

If you ain’t smiling, you damn well better be

We live in one hundred fifty square feet

Chorus

Two years ago for Valentines

I got your name tattooed and you got mine

They spelled my name wrong, but you didn’t mind, you said:

“Actually if you squint you don’t see the extra E”

So I’ll wear you till the day I die

And you’ll annoy me in the Bye and Bye

If I go first, darlin’, don’t you cry,

Just stuff me into taxidermy, we’ll be like

Chorus

Singin’s Enough

Daddy, I pawned my watch today

There’s still bills that I can’t pay

Momma, am I crying or am I singing?

Looks like your big-eyed little girl

Might just be too soft for this world

And all she hears are rusty bells of failure ringing.

Well, this place don’t have a stage

They’ve got a cheap Peavy PA

And the TV screens are blaring with the ball game

My voice sounds thin and strange

Nobody’s listening anyway

It’s just the college boys shouting “Free Bird”and getting wasted.

Chorus

If I never do better than playing these bars

And those big stage lights shine on friends with prettier luck

I will always know that wanting lives in my sequin covered heart

And come home to the place where just singin’s enough.

A brand new set of strings,

Thrift store dress of kelley green

And those cowgirl boots that walked me through my twenties

It’s Marion to Morganton

To Knoxville, Tennessee,

This sure is lonesome but the highway loves you, honey.

Chorus

Valley of the Bones

I dreamed you sat with me again on the porches of our past

You had the moon on your left shoulder like a giant hobo sack

Though you were drunk you weren’t talking all your usual trash

You said don’t worry, Janey, I made it home

I ain’t hurting here in the Valley of the Bones.

I said Matty, I lost a child in February it took me to my knees

I feel her tiny weight upon my chest in all my greedy dreams

And the losing side of a mother’s love left me howling with the mourning doves

Still there’s part of me believes a seed can grow

Will I sit beneath her tree in the Valley of the Bones?

Chorus

My bed is full of shouting ghosts tonight

A lightening-choir of losing in my throat

ButI’m less afraid of the ways I bleed because I know

I’m just a white bird

Flying homeward

To the Valley of the Bones.

You said Janey, we’re all just wearing skin till we’re roots and waves and wings again

When you realize you don’t own anything the things you lose hurt less

It’s your grieving bits, your busted parts,the potholes in your oil stain heart

And how you wear them is how you will be known

They’re-all we’re wearing in the Valley of the Bones.

Then in my dream you picked up a cigarette and you asked me for a light

Lord that match, it was the only star against my hungry night

You said remember Janey, you’re my dusky goddess of everything’s alright

You are here to walk the rest of us back home

Till I meet you smiling in the Valley of the Bones.

Chorus

Wedding Vows

When I was a kid I found a moth it had eyeballs on its wings

I knew that this was evidence of God

Such calculated grace meant there was purpose for all things

So finding you means I was never lost

Finding you means I was never lost.

I had 35 years of scuffing up my boots

From the Portland docks to these Blue Ridge Mountain arms

All my achey wandering was teaching me to love you

Till stone by stone I walked home to your heart

Stone by stone I walked home to your heart.

Chorus

Darlin I will be the sanctuary

Where you can lay down your heavy

Where all your debts and all your dreams can sweetly be

I will be your lighthouse, I’ll be your mirror, be your memory

All the wild messy beauty that is you, it has a home in me.

I love the little boy in you, he makes a patient model airplane

And the hungry young reporter seeking truth

The words you gather gracefully, they’re the swifts above my chimney

Honey you’re a choir of dancing wings against the blue

Oh you’re a choir of dancing wings against the blue.

Chorus

Darlin I will be the sanctuary

Where you can lay down your heavy

Where all your debts and all your dreams can sweetly be

I will be your lighthouse, I’ll be your mirror, be your memory

All the wild messy beauty that is you, it has a home in me.

And I have a home in you

When I was a kid I found a moth, it had eyeballs on its wings

I knew that this was evidence of God

Such calculated grace meant there was purpose for all things

So finding you means I was never lost

Finding you means I was never lost

Carnival of Hopes

When you come back down the mountain, let me know

I will be waiting with the champagne down below

With my clumsy love a-shinin’, it's really something when it glows

If you change your mind, there’ll be a light on in my window.

Your momma says you’re fine and happy too

Says you’ve got a farmer girl who’s quite taken with you

I see your momma in the market, what am I supposed to do

I fill my empty hands with bread, stare down at my shoes.

This new love of yours grows living things from dirt

I’ll bet she’s got tattoos on those sturdy arms of hers

I can’t keep a house plant alive and it ain’t no wondering why

You found some better arms than mine to call you home at night.

So I’ll lay down my hammer

I will lay down my busted carnival of hopes

‘Cause I ain’t getting any younger

Uncurl my fist, all you’re gonna find is fraying rope

Just a woman getting older holding a fraying rope.

Now this morning there were two crows by the road

They were flying curiously close and swooping dangerously low

And I couldn’t tell if they were lovers or if they were fighting foes

I think God lives in the things that I don’t know.

And when my feet are feeling light leaving the bar

In some strange city where I cannot find the stars

This fellow here knows I like whiskey, he don’t know nothing ‘bout my heart

Tell me, is Orion burning bright wherever you are?

I was a crazy thing of just 19 years old

When I took that Mason Dixon Line over the Pennsylvania coal

And I should have left you right alone, but the heart knows what it knows

And now your face is tattooed on my bones

I’ll lay down my hammer

I will lay down my busted carnival of hopes

Because, well, I ain’t getting any younger

Uncurl my fists, all you’re gonna find is fraying rope

You know you were my evergreen tree in the snow

That don’t matter much now, but all I know

Is I am built for many things and none of them are lettin' go

None of them are letting go.

So if you come back down the mountain, let me know

I’ll throw a big old country fair down below

With my clumsy love a-shining, it’s really something when it glows

If you change your mind, there’ll be a light on in my window.

©2016 Jane Kramer ASCAP

 Good Woman

I am not a good woman

I lie and I cheat

I’ve got this ugly wandering

Tattooed on the soles of my feet

And I’m not striving for greatness

I am just trying to sleep

Since all this not being a good woman

Has caught up with me.

So you’ve sent me a-packing

It’s for good now, you say

If I were you, I’d have sent me long ago

Don’t get me wrong, love, I wanted to stay

But you dream of hopeful things like wedding rings,

A settled down soul to share your days

I tried to settle down my soul

But the damn thing just wandered away.

Now it’s 34 years and I still can’t rock myself to sleep

So I’m hanging my hopes on this bar stool ‘cause I just can’t trust my feet

I bathed myself in your river

I used words like forever

I left my skin on your sheets

But that didn’t make

A good woman out of me.

I could drive up Saint John’s Bridge

And do a swan dive straight in

Or deposit myself at the nunnery

Do the hard time for my great many sins

That river bottom calls to me

It’d be so easy, but I can’t unlearn to swim

My love a magnet pull

It keeps me here in this lonely skin.

Darlin, I want to be better

But what if better’s  not enough

My days have turned to dying embers

It’s fear, not wine that’s filling up my cup

Darlin, I walk by the river

Darlin, I walk on the stones

Darlin, I’d hoped love was bigger

Than the burden I carry alone

But I am the mistress of my misfortune

I am the owner of my woe

And if I don’t get right with me

There ain’t no loving arms gonna carry me home.

Now it's 34 years and I still can't rock myself to sleep

So I'm hanging my hopes on this bar stool 'cause i just can't trust my feet

I bathed myself in your river

I used words like forever

I left my skin on your sheets

But that didn't make a good woman

Can't nobody make a good woman

I hope someday I can make a good woman

Out of me.

©2016 Jane Kramer ASCAP

Truck Stop Stars

When a broken woman leaves her little mountain town

Where she knew every river, every bar and every store clerk’s name

She’ll put a country between the love that made her bleed

And the hope that she’ll be whole again someday.

She’ll gather up the hollow that’s beneath her skin

Take off on 40 West like she’s caught fire

As the Blue Ridge recede and the corn fields begin

She’ll count the blackbirds of her loss with every mile.

Till one night when she’s filling up her car

She’ll find if she looks real hard

Above the neon and the diesel on the wind

She can see the truck stop stars

Just like a map of everywhere she’s been

That brought her there to meet herself again.

It’ll take her 30 something years and crossing 3 state lines

To know that love’s got teeth and you’d better bet you won’t be spared the bite

You can hide inside the bottle, you can hide inside the bible

Neither one’s got arms to hold you close at night.

Somewhere in Montana she’ll hear a song he used to hum

Then she’s riding with the ghost she thought she was running from

She’ll leave her wedding band in the Clark Fork River sand

And stumble up the banks into the sun.

Till one night when she thinks she went too far

She’ll find new lines around her eyes

In the motel bathroom light

And recognize the face there as her own

And when she fears she’s never getting home

She'll find if she looks real hard

above the neon and the diesel on the wind

she can see the truck stop stars

Just like a map of everywhere she's been

That brought her there to meet herself again.

©2016 Jane Kramer ASCAP