Music and Lyrics by Alastair Moock ©2007 Moockshake Music
(Inspired by the Russell Banks novel)
A father farmer far out in the hills
Rich in family poor in dollar bills
Struggling with the call of heaven’s host
Fighting off the demons and the ghosts
Heard a cry from far off in the south
Turned his gaze away from his own house
Found the battle he was born to fight
Took his sons and left that very night
The current conflict raging in the west
Lawrence, Kansas next to face the test
The father and the sons come overland
Within a year there’s blood on all their hands
Every man’s affected when he kills
Death’s a mighty bitter-tasting pill
But John Brown heard the whisper in his ear
Now bring to the South what you’ve done here
Chorus:
Cloudsplitter open up the skies
Make this country open up its eyes
Cloudsplitter what’s it gonna take
How’s a nation fix a great mistake
October sixteenth, eighteen fifty-nine
Twenty-one men waiting for his sign
To cross the wide Potomac to a shore
Where slavery’s hold was cold as it was sure
Harpers Ferry fell without a fight
And sixty prisoners taken on the night
A fully loaded federal armory
But no slaves came to claim the weaponry
By next day’s end the army’d shot them down
They captured some including old John Brown
Dragged them to a local court in chains
Where two months later all of them was hanged
On the stand John Brown addressed the court
His right hand on the bible for support:
Remember those in bonds as bound with them
I’m bound by laws of God not laws of men
Chorus
Within two years the Civil War’d begun
Many reasons John Brown being one
And though Abe Lincoln never did intend
He finished what Brown started in the end
Washington is on my dollar bill
Jefferson’s memorial on the hill
John Brown gave his life for our great sin
The textbooks almost never mention him
Racial fear still fuels this nation’s fire
The smoke is thick and always getting higher
And up in Heaven John Brown sits and cries
Come back John and open up our eyes
Chorus