[Slow Tempo] [Crowd Noise] [Spoken Intro — Male Vocal — Jhöl] you know...... Freud used to call our parents the first gods...... and I've been thinking about what that means...... if your parents are gods and something is still wrong...... the problem must be you...... kids don't call it trauma...... they call it love...... and they just keep giving what they got...... until someone points it out...... or their life breaks...... [Live Performance] [Verse 1] He drove to Fort Erie Didn't come to fix a thing Slid two-fifty cross the table Said I have to take her side But I love you, son You can always come home Then he walked back to the car And I watched him go alone [Pre-Chorus] Sixteen years old Standing in the cold With a tool I never asked for And nowhere left to go [Chorus] Man of the house Nobody showed me how Just a hammer in my hand And a boy inside the man Man of the house Learned it all the hard way Every wall I ever built Was really just me In the way [Verse 2] She was on the bathroom floor I didn't understand Drove her to the hospital With shaking in my hands Got to the bushes first By the front step in the yard Nobody tells you grief Can live that quiet That hard [Pre-Chorus] Eighteen years old Doing what I'm told By a version of a man I swore I'd never hold [Chorus] Man of the house Nobody showed me how Just a hammer in my hand And a boy inside the man Man of the house Learned it all the hard way Every wall I ever built Was really just me In the way [Bridge] A stranger at the wedding Grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go Said son you can be right Or you can be happy I smiled like I knew Went home to what I know Picked up the only thing They ever put in my hands A long time ago [Chorus] Man of the house Nobody showed me how Just a hammer in my hand And a boy inside the man Man of the house Learned it all the hard way Every wall I ever built Was really just me In the way [Outro] Dad I watched you leave Across that parking lot You gave me everything you had Even when it wasn't a lot Man of the house That was all you knew Man of the house I learned it From you
