Southwood Plantation
Lyrics
I've got you
You've got whatever's left of me to get
Our conversations are like minefields
No one's found a safe way through one yet
I spend a lot of money
I buy you white gold
We raise up a little roof
Against the cold
On Southwood Plantation Road
Where at night the stars blow like milk across the sky
Where the high wires drop
Where the fat crows fly
All night long you giggle and scream
Your brown eyes deeper than a dream
I am not going to lose you
We are going to stay married
In this house like a Louisiana graveyard
Where nothing stays buried
On Southwood Plantation Road
Where the dead will walk again
Put on their Sunday best
And mingle with unsuspecting Christian men
La la la la la
Banter
- This, my friends, is a dance number. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of fifty audiences so far this year have declined my kind offer that they get they freak on to this song. But you may freak away. I won’t tell nobody. [Audience member: Southwood Plantation Road!] That’s the fucking song, my friend! (2003-09-27)
- This is a dance number, it was on Tallahassee. When I say this is a dance number, I mean to dance to it, because that makes me happy. Not that it's really your job to make me hapy, but at the same time, I'm your typical selfish sentient being, desiring happiness wherever I go. So if I can coax other people to provide me with it, I will. That's sort of, if not my job, my nature. Yours too, if you're honest. So dance, goddamnit, dance! (2004-10-15 The Social)
- This is a song about a couple who needs to get divorced but they don’t know how. That’s how I’m going to pitch it as a movie, right, because you need conflict. And the whole deal with the Tallahassee couple is there isn’t any actual conflict because they are both in pursuit of the same goal: total self-annihilation. So, that’s not really a conflict; that’s not man vs. nature- I mean. That’s not man versus anything. That’s just like a complete, total situation, is what that is. (2011-03-30)
- This is a song about a couple of people who are going to get themselves a delightful little divorce. One of these days. (2011-08-05)
- It’s about how sometimes you go to a house and poison it on purpose. (2012-05-06)
- This is a song about a divorcing couple in Florida. And the things they do and the lovely things they see on their way to that blessed day when they sign the papers in their lawyer's office. (2013-07-26 Newport Folk Festival)
- I've said it before and I'll say it again. Get a job where people clap for you when you take a drink of water. The people in this song don't have jobs at all. (2022-05-21 The Sylvee)
Live Performances
Footnotes