[The Mountain Tax] [ Verse 1 ] Yellow fog don't roll no more, it crawls across the ridge, Like a dying beast beneath the rusted timber bridge. The creek tastes like battery acid, stinks of iron rot, Where the old camps left the poison in the plot. [ Pre-Chorus 1 ] The well-water turned the marrow in our bone, Gave us thicker skin and a heart of heavy stone. [ Chorus 1 ] Hunger is a master that we're driven to obey, To keep the winter shadows and the bitter cold at bay. It’s a heartless gospel written in the mountain mud, The price of staying living is a debt that's paid in blood. [ Verse 2 ] Shiny metal cage comes screaming through the dark of night, Chasing down the blacktop with a pair of silver lights. I laid the railroad ties with the spikes toward the sky, And watched them hit the ditch where the city spirits lie. [ Pre-Chorus 2 ] You shouldn’t wander where the road begins to bend, Don't just think about yourself, think about the end. [ Chorus 2 ] The ridge takes a portion for the seeds to finally grow, A sacrifice is needed for the only life we know. It isn't born of malice or a wicked, dark desire, Just the law of the mountain and the fuel for the fire. [Instrumental Break - Blazing Electric Guitar Solo] [ Bridge 1 ] The fog is heavy with a chemical rot that stings, Drowning out the music that the summer locust sings. Yellow-tinged and thick enough to choke a healthy man, Poison is the architect of our survival plan. [ Verse 3 ] We drag the heavy burden to the cedar smokehouse floor, Locking out the winter with a heavy wooden door. Curing out the harvest over coals of hickory wood, The only way our kinfolk ever truly understood. [ Pre-Chorus 3 ] The time for crying mercy is a season long since past, Make your mind up, no excuses, the die has been cast. [ Chorus 3 ] We do what we must when the pantry’s running lean, Washing off the memory until the hands are clean. The mountain is a mother with a cold and hollow breast, Demanding every stranger be a temporary guest. [ Bridge 2 ] In the root cellar where the shadows start to dance, Suitcases of floral dresses bought for a romance. Gold watches and the photos of the faces we erased, Trophies of the mountain tax never go to waste. [ Verse 4 ] We watch them from the canopy on twisted, wooden limbs, Singing for the tourists with our quiet mountain hymns. The holler hides the echoes long before they reach the way, Keeping all the secrets that the city folks would say. [ Pre-Chorus 4 ] Listen to the silence of the blacktop and the dew, I told you once before it's not always about you. [ Final Chorus ] The ridge will have its payment in the marrow and the breath, There is no kind of honor in the middle of a death. We are the collectors of the toll that’s overdue, The ancient law is hungry and it’s looking right at you. [ Outro ] Check the cellar doors. Keep the hickory burning. The mountain tax... always collected. The bloodline goes on.
