Sipsey River Bottoms

A very long, long time ago, when I was but a wee girl of 20 or thereabouts, I was a huge fan of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?  Actually, I still love the movie and own it, I just haven't watched it in a long time.  Maybe I'll have to do that once my finals are over next month.  Anyway, one of my reasons for loving that movie so much is for the old-timey music in it--gospel, folk, country.  So I endeavored to write a song in that style, and came up with "Sipsey River Bottoms."  Of course, I only wrote the lyrics.

I posted it to my LiveJournal, and a friend of mine on LJ who is a musician (Glen), took the lyrics and wrote music around it and recorded himself singing it and then gave it back to me.  I loved the result, and I need to record my own version.  Perhaps next month when The Collaborator is here we'll do some kind of guitar-harmonica cover of my own song.  Maybe even with harmony?!  We'll see.  You can download Glen's version of the song here.

Lyrics are below the cut, if you need them.


Down in the Sipsey River Bottoms
Down where the water runs black and clear
Down in the reed-filled alligator deathlands
There I go, to wash my hair.

I wash my hair while the frogs sing dirges
I wash my hair and I comb it back
I wash my hair in bootlegged moonshine
Where the water runs clear and black.

Down with moonshiners, still at stilling
Down with the still unbroken night
Down on the banks with bare feet sinking
Into the mud, red, dark and white.

I wait on snakes that hang from branches
I wait 'til they fall in the water there
I take that snake, and I knock him senseless
And I use him to tie back my black, black hair.

Down in the Sipsey River Bottoms
Down where the mud runs black and red
Down where the moonshiners distill whiskey
I go to count the alligator dead.