Lyrics

The following song is a work of fiction. All of the events, characters, and institutions within it are fictitious and, in some cases, downright absurd. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, or to any actual events or institutions is purely coincidental. Especially in the case of persons and institutions who have very diligent, highly paid attorneys at their disposal. Our attorney—who is not highly paid, and, unsurprisingly, also not very diligent—suggested that we let you know these things up front but still cautioned us that releasing this song as-is might still land us in some hot water and would most certainly offend some folks out there. So that’s exactly what we’re doing. Now, sit back and enjoy the show.

Katie McCrory was a waitress down at old man Chapman’s Barn,
The world’s best dinner theater in town.
She could dance and she could act.
She waited tables in the back,
‘Cause the lead was always sweet Samantha Brown.

Two days shy of that year’s New Year’s Eve extravaganza.
Scandal shook the town when their beloved sweet Samantha Brown,
Didn’t make it to her bed.
Some feared her lost or maybe dead,
But old man Chapman, he was the worst to take the news.

He said, “I never had an understudy.
Never needed two.”
She hadn’t missed a day in years. He fell to tears.
But just as he was throwing in the towel…

He could overhear the singing in the kitchen.
Like velvet, sultry, perfectly in tune.
Some backwoods waitress stacking plates,
Just staring at the Brunswick stew.

He asked her if she knew the lines and had ever wore a dress.
They had the same size shoes, hips, waist, and chest.
Spit and image with a bit less sheen,
Her front teeth were crooked and her eyes were green.

But she knew how to sell every beat on the stage,
And how to land a mark.
She could put you in stitches with nothing but words on a page,
Then suddenly take a scene dark.

Nothing short of bewitching, uncanny at times,
The way she’d embroider those lyrics and lines.
She was masterful.
The evening of the show after the dress rehearsal…

She could see a figure in the mezzanine like Columbo poking all around.
That washed up Banner beat writer Billy Hance,
Turning all hell upside down.

Asking everybody questions about what they saw,
And where they were and when.
But when he locked eyes with ol’ Katie something faded from his grin.

He knew her daddy was a drifter and her momma was a grifter,
From a long line of cluster B’s.
And on this side of the Harpeth,
Nuts, they say, fall awful close to trees.

She said she’d heard some ugly whispers that sweet Samantha had succumbed,
To her sweet tooth for men in power.
She was wont to having something called,
Ménage à trois’ with socialites in these swanky Belle Meade haunts.
She’d had trysts with sons of senators and just about every damn DuPont.

On the night in question Katie said she practiced with the worship band At David Lipscomb College, read a book: Entrepreneurship and
The Modern Tree of Knowledge,
Went to Leiper’s Fork at quarter after eight,
And had a meat and three at Puckett’s then went home.

He said, “well Kate.”
That’s quite a story, I can see you’re swamped.
I’ll get out of your hair. Just one more thing.
Tell me about those smudges on the hood of your Corvair.

It turns out someone mentioned seeing it that night near Newsom’s Mill.
Unloading something—maybe someone,
Rolled up tight in checkered twill.

They measured one another up there in silence on the stage.
He knew from previous experiences her momma had a tendency to kind of fly into a rage.
The realization finally hit them both like a myoclonic jerk.
When she cocked her head and conjured up this icy little smirk.

She said, “Maybe you’re right, but who’d believe you?
You’re like a drunk without a bar but worse,
A hack without a paper, out here slinging heresay about cars.”

“I’ve got a show to do,” she told him.
“It’s the last one of the year.
It’d be a shame to have to miss it.
Sure hope you don’t disappear.”

He exited the stage and took one last look from afar.
The moment he was out of sight, she bolted to her car.

The rain was almost boiling on that radiator grille.
Still in costume, she was making like the wind for Newsom’s Mill.

Billy in his Gremlin, Katie flooring that Corvair.
She knew that it’d be curtains for the last to make it there.

Katie cleared the train tracks. Got some air over the bridge.
Turned the corner down by Newsom’s, rolled her car into a ditch.

She crawled out through the windshield, made it past a sycamore.
Just as bolt of lightning brought it through the roof and blocked the door.

The rafters started burning. What was left of them at least.
In the distance she could just make out the sound of the police.

And there before her eyes was sweet Samantha on the ground.
Handcuffed to an old arcade post that was cracked and coming down.

Katie had a chance to run but then she doubled back again.
She stared at Sam and pondered all the things that might have been.

She searched around for something, found a rusty adze nearby.
She swung it back and that’s last time she was ever seen alive.

The smoke and heat burned up the beams in no time,
But it was the fire of jealousy inside that brought her down.
The end might justify the means at showtime,
But you carry all the weight of every jewel that’s in that crown.

Billy rolled up on the mill, the flames were in the sky,
When roughly half the MNPD western precinct all arrived.

They set up a perimeter just in time to see the blast.
“There’s no way anyone survived that,” Billy said.
But then there was a shout that over yonder in the grass…

There was an angel silhouetted by the conflagration,
In a tattered evening gown.
They roared and rumbled,
There she stumbled, sweet Samantha Brown.

They tried to give her medical attention but she pushed on through.
And motioned for a set of keys from the boys in blue.
Burned and bleeding, caked with grist, but still she still wouldn’t stay.
“Tell the ambulance to wait. I’ve got a role to play.”

Things around the barn got back to normal after that.
Samantha stuck around till ‘82.
They named a twisted, backwoods, country road McCrory, after Katie.
After everything, Mr. Chapman said it was the least that they could do.

Oh, and one more thing…

They never found her body at the mill. They found her dress.
And Chapman’s stew was on the sweet side for a while.
According to the surgeons out at Vanderbilt, Samantha, she was a mess.
They said they couldn’t fix her irises of course, but otherwise made her good as new.
They said they even went and straightened out her smile.