[Instrumental] [Hook] I look up river… …see what’s coming… see what’s strong and what might… …give. Ain’t everything worth sandbagging… ain’t everything built to live. I look up river… [Pause] grit starts before the cur…ent hits. [Instrumental] [Verse] Water’s climbing past the old mark, carrying limbs and loose boards, rolling brown and moving mean fence post leaning, roots are showing, culvert choking, every little weak spot coming clean. So I walk the bank and study, watch the bend and watch the presh…urr, see what’s holding and what’s star…ting to suh…lih…lih…lih…lip… some things need another brace, some things need moved higher, some things need left where the river can take its guh…guh…guh…rip… That ain’t quitting, that ain’t weakness. That’s knowing what deserves… The fight. Strength ain’t saving every piece. Strength is choosing what you keep upright. [Pre-Hook] Brace what matters. Move what won’t. Hold what carries. Lose what don’t. Look upstream before the weight arrives… [Pause] then meet it standing where you chose. [Hook] I look up river… …see what’s coming… see what’s strong and what might give. Ain’t everything worth sandbagging ain’t everything built to live. I look up river… [Pause] grit starts before the cur…ent hits. [Instrumental] [Verse] I started doing that with little thing people… Bad plans and worse habits… old beliefs I kept because they used to help me… …stand started asking what still carries, what just lingers, what gets heavier every time I try to drag it through my hands. Some things earned another season, some things needed one more chance, some things only stayed because I feared what letting go would mean but if the cur…ent keeps on coming, care…ee…ing everything gets costly when the weight ain’t strong enough to justify the strain. So I don’t measure grit by suf…err…ing. I measure grit by what I save. And sometimes the hardest kind of strength is letting water take what shouldn’t stay. [Instrumental] [Bridge] Current shows the weak spots first, weak spots show me where I brace, where I brace decides what stands when all that water fills the space, what still stands becomes the lesson, lesson changes what I carry, what I carry changes where I build the next thing anyway. Then I run it backward slowly, where I build came from what carried, what I carried came from what survived the last hard rise, what survived came from the choosing, choosing came from looking up river long enough to see what pressure meant before it arrived. [Pause] Grit ain’t waiting for the water. Grit is knowing what to do before the water gets to you. [Hook] I look up river… …see what’s coming… see what’s strong and what might give. Ain’t everything worth sandbagging ain’t everything built to live. I look up river… [Pause] grit starts before the cur…ent hits. [Instrumental] [Final Hook] I look up river… Now I know what’s coming I know what’s worth the weight that I give. Brace the good and move the fragile let the old wash where it will. I look up river… [Pause] not because I fear the cur…ent... I look up river… because I plan to still be here… [Pause] …Up River!! …Up River!!
