East Of Woodstock West Of Viet Nam Lyrics

Tom Russell East Of Woodstock West Of Viet Nam

I slept through the Nineteen Sixties, I heard Dory
Previn say
But me I caught me the great white bird, to the shores
of Africay
Where I lost my adolescent heart, to the sound of a
talking drum
Yeah, East of Woodstock, West of Vietnam

And on the roads outside Oshogbo, Lord I fell down on
my knees
There were female spirits in old mud huts, iron bells
ringing up in the trees
And an eighty-year-old white priest, she made juju all
night long
Yeah, East of Woodstock, West of Vietnam

Raise high the roof beams carpenter boy, yeah we’re
coming through the rye
In the cinema I saw the man on the moon, I laughed so
hard I cried
It was somewhere in those rainy seasons, that I learned
to carve my song
Yeah, East of Woodstock, West of Vietnam

Oh Africa, Mother Africa, you lay heavy on my breast
You old cradle of civilization, heart of darkness blood
and death
Though we had to play you running scared, when the
crocodile ate the sun
Yeah, East of Woodstock, West of Vietnam

Well I think it’s going to rain tonight, I can smell it
coming off the sea
As I sit here reading old Graham Greene I taste Africa
on every page
Then I close my eyes and see those red clay roads, and
it’s sundown and boys I’m gone
Yeah, East of Woodstock, West of Vietnam

Raise high the roof beams carpenter boy, yeah we’re
coming through the rye
It was a moveable feast of war and memory, a dark old
lullaby
It was the smoke of a thousand camp fires, it was the
wrong end of a gun,
Yeah, East of Woodstock, West of Vietnam.

Yeah, East of Woodstock, West of Vietnam