Lyrics for the songs on Granddad Planted Trees Return to Bob Gramann's home page

Grandad Planted Trees

Raking leaves they rustle,

They crackle and they crunch

All this color, a cool grey sky,

I’ll get ‘em piled by lunch.

I love these trees like life itself

They’re living histories.

They remind me of my grandad

Cause Grandad planted trees

You could say it with flowers.

You could scream it from the rooftops

Or you could beg from your knees.

You could say “I’m sorry.”

Or “Darling, I love you.”

Granddad planted trees.

Grandad came when the town was new.

The square was flat and clear.

In his vision, he saw shade.

He planted this poplar here.

Over there he planted an oak

When he married my Grandma

And he grew the maple in his front yard

The one I climbed upon.

When you plant trees

It’s not for tomorrow.

No shade tomorrow

From them itty bitty seeds.

It’s your children’s children

Who‘ll look up and feel the wonder.

It’s like loving some person

You might never get to meet.

It’s not politics, it’s murder

Too hard to comprehend.

Nothing to imagine

Could make us whole again

Then I remembered how to hope

Like Grandad taught to me

It’s gonna take a little while

To plant 3,000 trees.

Rappahannock Running Free

Again, the eagle beats his wings

To climb above the trees

Over the locks on the Rappahannock

What's left of history.

Where the Council and the contractors

Over quality disagreed.

Where the present meets the past

And some things never change.

For a man can only hold

A piece of earth

For a lifetime.

Water leaks through fingers

You can't hold it at all.

I love the Rappahannock

And its water running free.

In the rapids of this river,

That's where I want to be.

From Carter's Run at Waterloo

It drops three hundred feet.

Forty-seven locks in fifty miles

1849 complete.

With first year's drought and railroads

So quickly obsolete.

A canal system for just four years

And history ever since.

An aqueduct and wood crib dam

Fed power to the mills,

And factories and tanneries

The foundations are there still.

The concrete dam in 1910

Electric generators until

Only forty years ago

And now a poor man's home.

Poison ivy coats the bank

Where we climbed around the dam.

A century and a half of portages

Canoes across the land.

The damn dam blocked the spawning fish

Flooded rapids behind the span.

In 2004, we blew it up

We didn’t need for that dam.

The government and the spawning fish

Conspired to blow the dam.

When the whole town came together

The concrete couldn’t stand.

Now the Rappahannock

Will forever run so free

All the way from Chester Gap

No boundaries to the sea.

Why make up songs and play the banjo?

It’s obnoxious, crude, and loud.

And, think of my poor mother:

You can bet she’s not too proud.

And if talent were humility

I would stand here head unbowed.

It’s not the money,

I just do it cause I can.

Cause I can,

There’s no reason

I just do it cause I can.

Because I can, because I can

I don’t have to have a reason, I just do it cause I can.

It might be for the greater good

Or the betterment of man.

But it’s not! I just do it cause I can.

Because I can,

There’s no reason

I just do it cause I can.

Sometimes it’s not a genius

But a thought whose time has come.

Was there a patent on the cartwheel?

Who invented bubble gum?

Why did Edward Teller build the bomb?

Why grow a mouse to say “Hi Mom!”?

Sometimes the only reason is

It happens cause it can.

There’s no reason

It just happens cause it can.

All night I dream of greatness.

All day I’m making plans.

It’s great to be a corporate president

The whole company in my hands

Selling stocks to the investors

While I loot the pension fund.

It’s not the money,

I just do it cause I can.

Cause I can,

There’s no reason

I just do it cause I can.

Why look out for the future?

We can make a buck today.

There’s oil beneath the tundra

Make the wildlife move away.

Don’t worry ‘bout the smoke

We’ll clean up another day.

It’s not the money,

I just do it cause I can.

Cause I can,

There’s no reason

I just do it cause I can.

He chose a home by the tracks

And he listens through the night

As the trains go by.

He makes a note of a shudder

Where he knows

There ought to be a hum.

Every squeal, every rasp,

Each vibration stokes concern

For the engines he loves.

Twenty years

I've been working on these trains.

Twenty years lining brakes,

Filing gears,

Honing cylinders to pump so smooth,

I love to make them run smooth.

Scar-crossed hands record the history

Of the slips of the wrenches

When he cursed at his love.

Grease lines his knuckles,

Smudges mark

His fingertips and face.

And he'd labor several days

Tweak injectors, tune the ports,

To make a motor sing pure.

But the railroad has more engines

To repair than

He can tune in a week.

Clean men in suits

Have no feel for the beauty

Of the chorus of the rails.

To keep his job he'd have to change

Just fix the trains, keep them running,

Forget how they sound.

Separated, uneven strokes

Mark the cadence, show the parting

Of man and machine.

Heart and diesel

Throbbed together all their lives

Now must work apart.

Like many lovers, the fading whistle

Of a train leaving town

Brings a tear to his eye.

Written in admiration of "The Broken Brain" by Keith Russel Ablow, writer and chief resident in psychiatry at New England Medical Center in Boston, as seen in The Washington Post 2/25/92.

Sara, sing about the mountains

About the beauty of each day.

Play us tunes of love and fortunes.

Sing of places far away.

I don’t know why I stopped that morning.

Yard sales aren’t my kind of thing.

Accumulations of a lifetime,

Displayed to sell for what they’d bring.

Pots and pans and plates and glasses.

They said, “He’s gone. He won’t need those.”

Shirts and books, old vinyl records,

Shoes and pants, and winter clothes.

Leaning there against the table

Cracked and scarred, it’s neck askew.

On the peghead it said, “Sara.”

A strange guitar, not one I knew.

I surely didn’t need another.

Eight guitars might be enough.

Impulsively, I gave her twenty.

Number nine looked pretty rough.

I examined Sara on my workbench.

She was once a fine guitar.

I cleaned the joints, reglued the braces.

Fixed the neck, touched up the scars.

Scarcely were the strings upon her,

An unfamiliar tune sang out.

It drew my fingers to the fretboard.

What the hell was this about?

First, we played an Irish jig

Though no Irish songs I knew.

Then my fingers plucked a hornpipe.

Then we played some blues.

I recognized a theme from Bach

As the notes when flying by.

Tunes I’d never played before

From my fingers they did fly.

Sara played the most beautiful music

Astounding words sang in my voice.

All the songs I sang before

Compared to this, they seemed like noise.

It’s hard to claim a yard sale box

Could make me what I am today.

Unless you’d heard me sing before,

You won’t believe me anyway.

All my life, I’ve notcooked much.

No great meals came from my hands.

Now, whene’er I think of Sara,

I wish I’d bought those pots and pans.

Gotta go get me some groceries,

Gotta go get me some beer,

Gotta go 'cross town for a meeting,

Gotta get away from here.

Gotta drive to work each morning,

Gotta drive home every night.

Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go,

Gotta STOP:

It's a traffic light,

Sit and count the stores,

Deer and the cattle,

Ain't roamin' here no more.

This used to be a place,

You could so quickly drive by,

But now you sit in traffic,

And watch the time fly.

Farmers planted houses

It's the best paid crop by far.

Come heres came to Fredericksburg

Brought along an extra car.

Now, they're all in front of me,

As we sit here breathing fumes.

Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go,

Gotta STOP:

It's a traffic light,

They've built a shopping mall

Where the hawks used to soar

And the snakes used to crawl.

This used to be a place,

You could so quickly drive by,

But now you sit in traffic,

And watch the time fly.

Ninety-five's become Main Street

In Boston-Richmond town.

No place anymore called wilderness.

The pavement's been put down.

Gotta go get me some headphones

To listen to pastoral sounds.

Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go,

Gotta STOP!

It's a traffic light,

Sit and watch our town grow

Remember how it used to be

Hear those horns blow.

This used to be a place,

You could so quickly drive by,

But now you sit in traffic,

And watch the time fly.

What we need's a stinking factory,

Drive these people all away.

That smell'd give us our town back,

Remove all this delay.

All these folks won't pay your taxes,

Growth won't keep the prices down,

Gotta go, gotta grow, gotta go,

Gotta grow, gotta go, gotta grow,

Gotta STOP!

Fear of the unknown,

Fear of the sounds at night.

When I was a child,

I slept better with a light.

Until that night the lights went out

When I really saw the stars

Now I long for the darkest nights

To lay out in the yard.

Turn out the lights.

Let the darkness fill the night sky

Let the stars shine out so bright.

Peer into the universe

Feel humble and small.

May the starlight and the wonder

Shine down on us all.

First Pleiades, then Orion

Creep across the sky at night.

There’s still time to get Sirius

See Pollux shine so bright.

In summer there’s the teapot

Million worlds in that steam.

Whose inhabitants watch the Milky Way

And wonder what it means.

Lights of the city cloak

The mystery and wonder.

More a ceiling than a universe

That’s the sky we’re under.

That brightness makes your world so close

Does it really banish fright?

See farther in the darkness

Than with the brightest light.

A fuzzy spot, a thousand stars

The telescope reveals.

And look into the blackness

Where the planets dust congeals.

Ride our planet through the history

Of all that was and is

While crickets chirp and bullfrogs burp

And meteors downward whiz.

When I was just a baby

Music was my mom

Lullabies and shortnin’ bread

And the waltzes she would hum.

Life was pretty simple then

At least it was for me.

I love to hear her sing again

Take me back to what used to be.

Sometimes it’s a children’s song

Or, it happens when I hear a waltz

But mostly when the ladies sing

I remember my mom.

Warm like eggs in a robin’s nest

Flowers named “yellow” and “red.”

The ghastly crimes of a nursery rhyme.

The odors of baking bread.

Childhood’s like Eden

A long way and a long time from here.

The melodies in a woman’s voice

Make the path seem lighted and clear.

So mothers, sing to your children.

It’s a gift their whole life long.

And if we ever find peace on earth

We know it started with mothers’ songs.

Life is Too Short To Fold Underwear

http://www.wingedseedmusic.com/

http://www.blueboat.net/

Sailing ships and horses formed

The shape of this old river town.

It’s what it is ‘cause of what it was,

And the roads still wind around.

A crooked smile, a wink, a nod

From grand-dad through my son.

Gestures, stories, skills, and hopes,

Some habits passed along.

And a love so strong

I feel like I’ve earned it.

Linking generations with

Old stories and names.

I’ll have to pass it on

That’s how to return it.

The magic of a family’s love

Warmer than the brightest flames.

“Get your elbows off the table!”

Mom yelled day after day.

We tried hard not to listen

All we wanted was to play.

“Take the time to do it right”

She’d say again and again.

Things you want your kids to know

Just take time to sink in.

And a love so strong

They’ll feel like they’ve earned it.

Linking generations with

Old stories and names.

They’ll have to pass it on

That’s how to return it.

The magic of a family’s love

Warmer than the brightest flames.

I’ve got my granddad’s violin

She’s got her father’s nose.

It might be hard to recognize

What’s left of long agos.

Overlap of generations

That’s all the time we get

To know our kids or parents

Let’s not waste it on regret.

We need a love so strong

We feel like we’ve earned it.

Linking generations with

Old stories and names.

We’ll have to pass it on

That’s how to return it.

The magic of a family’s love

Warmer than the brightest flames.

I’ve thought it over carefully

There’s this lesson I can tell:

No matter what else you do,

Pick your parents well.