Drown This Town (3:58)

I can still see the dust flying behind that Cadillac
The path we walked for many years to get to our old shack Out stepped a sharp-dressed man with his face as cold as stone The tall, dark man said, “excuse me son, is your daddy home” Sorry filled my daddy’s face when he opened up that door Almost like the day we lost my brother in the war
The tall, dark man stood firmly there with a checkbook in his hand And said, “In seven months Mister, we’re gonna close the dam”


You can take the wasted years, all the blood, the sweat, the tears And the heartaches that it took to build this home
All the days I’ve worked and slaved and put it all in a water grave And leave the valley and everything I’ve known
Well they might flood this place a half-mile deep But they’ll never drown this town

We worked our fingers to the bone from sun up to sun down
The days were long and the work was hard in that Johnson County town With next to nothing on the check that took away our land
We watched it all just slip away right from our calloused hands

Desperately we grabbed up everything that we could find Trying to save the memories of the life we’d leave behind
Well in ‘48 they closed those gates as the evening sky turned red We watched the valley disappear as my daddy turned and said

You can take the wasted years, all the blood, the sweat, the tears And the heartaches that it took to build this home
All the days I’ve worked and slaved and put it all in a water grave And leave the valley and everything I’ve known
Well they might flood this place a half-mile deep But they’ll never drown this town

Well they might flood this place a half-mile deep But they’ll never drown this town