Cry for Judas

Lyrics

Some things you do just to see
How bad they'll make you feel
Sometimes you try to freeze time
'Til the slots are a blur of spinning wheels[1]
But I am just a broken machine
And I do things that I don't really mean

Long black night, morning frost
I'm still here, but all is lost

Speed up to the precipice
And then slam on the brakes
Some people crash two or three times
And then learn[5] from their mistakes
But we are the ones who don't slow down at all
And there's nobody there to catch us when we fall

Long black night, morning frost
I'm still here, but all is lost

Feel the storm every night[4], hope it passes by
Hallucinate a shady grove where Judas went to die

Unfurl the black velvet altar cloth
Draw a white chalk Baphomet
Mistreat your altar boys long enough
And this is what you get
Sad and angry, can't learn how to behave
Still won't know how in the darkness[2] of the grave

Long black night, morning frost
I'm still here,[3] but all is lost

Banter

This is a song about the guy who sold out Jesus. Uh, he was a close friend of Jesus. Uh, and there's a thing in uh, there's a tradition, you know, in uh, among many christian traditions of sort of demonizing this fellow. And saying that he, you know, sort of just wound up in concert with the devil, but in point fact: the thing that makes him -Oh man, this is so, I used to teach Catechism, so I like saying this- The thing that makes Judas great is that, is that he is you, right? He is -Oh man, I'm gonna get religious on you for a second- so one reason that Jesus is unique in the history of religions is that he is that god that is supposed to be like you. He bleeds like you, he gets erections in his sleep, you know, he does those sort of...but that's who he is, right? He bleeds and he poops, he does all these human things, right? The gospels aren't particular about telling you about his nocturnal emissions right, but the fact of the matter is that he's supposed to be fully human and he's the first real god in history of whom that claim is made. And so that means he understands your struggle. That when things are going with you he's supposed to get it because he's exactly like you except that he's also God, right? But I mean, well then Aleister Crowley has something to say about that later on, but we'll leave that aside for the moment. But actually, the more human, the most human character in the gospels is Jesus, is Judas, who is Jesus's best friend, right. He's very close to him, right. And then at some point, he just -maybe he- something just slips in him, and somebody says "I'll give you thirty dollars if you tell me which one of these guys is Jesus, so that we can kill him. Because we got find him and kill him, but we don't trust you twelve to tell us which one is which." And Judas looks at the money, and maybe says "I don't have any money, and we're kinda poor. We wander around begging for food and once in a while the dude turns fish into a lot of fish or something, but for the most part we beg and we don't eat that well. We're poor. We run around trying to spread the Good Dude's -that the kingdom of God is now among you-.." But he maybe dwells too hard on what's wrong in his life at that moment, and he forgets that he has a friend. He just knows that there is some money in front of him and that maybe he feels like doing something shitty. So he takes the money and says "I'll go up and kiss the guy. The guy I kiss is the guy you get to kill." There's one tradition that holds that immediately after he does this, he feels really bad and goes and hangs himself. That's the saddest scene I can imagine. This is called Cry For Judas. (2012-12-13)
It’s a song about the shame that you carry within you throughout the world and that you can never seem to shrug yourself free of. You will get free of it someday, but I personally can’t tell you how because I don’t know. (2012-12-17)
In return, I'd like to play you another song about suicidal depression. [woo!] It's about how, if you are a certain type of person - me - you...but I'm not the only one, you hear about somebody who did something horrible and drastic and you feel bad, but there's a part of you that goes, what - now I know, now I recognize my kind, because you did that. So this is about a guy who did a terrible thing, and he couldn't live with the memory of it, so he went and did a worse thing. (2015-04-02 - Mercy Lounge, Nashville)
This is a song about how when you think about what Judas did, you gotta cry for him, because it's pretty sad. (2015-04-11 - City Winery One on One)
This song is about the [inevitable?] kind of sadness you feel when you consider the character of Judas. (2015-04-16 - Bogart's, Cincinnati)
This is a song about sympathy for people for whom no one has a lot of sympathy. (2015-06-03 - The Mayan, Los Angeles)
This is a profoundly Catholic song, actually. But I hope that the Protestants, can also enjoy it. It’s a song about, like, the first Protestant. Terrible joke. (2016-04-19)
This is a dancing crowd and I'm really happy about that. This is a dance tune for sure. (2023-07-13 The Vanguard)
Peter, I thought about it, not for very long, I think we're - Jon Wurster, funny song first or sad? [yelling] The consensus is sad. (2023-10-28 Longhorn Ballroom)

Live Performances

Footnotes

1. "reels" (2013-07-26, 2015-04-09, 2015-04-13, 2015-04-23, 2015-05-27, 2015-05-29b, 2015-06-03)
2. "warm arms" (2023-10-28), "dark arms" (2015-06-03)
3. "I am still here" repeated x2 (2015-05-27, 2015-05-29b, 2015-06-02, 2023-10-28)
4. "every single night" (2015-04-02, 2015-04-09, 2015-04-16), "every blessed night" (2015-04-22, 2015-05-29b, 2015-06-02, 2015-06-03)
5. "and then they learn" (2015-04-09, 2015-04-12, 2015-05-29a)