Summer Painter Lyrics

Bill Callahan Summer Painter

I painted names on boats for a summer
For luck you keep the same first letter
You don't want
You don't want
You don't want
Bad luck at sea

Rich man's folly and poor man's dream
I painted these
While beavers built dams all around me

And come September, come fall
Holding a job was not believable behavior at all
So I split
But like a beaver is a dam builder you never really quit

I made some dough and I socked it away
I always said for a rainy day
I never truly knew who I was working for anyway

The rich or the poor
Who am I working for?
The rich or the poor

When the hurricane hit
Some found it suspicious that I'd just since left the frame
Like all that time spent down by the water
Had somehow given me control over the rain
And some people say wrongly that I washed things away
Guess I got my rainy day

Like a sorcerer's cape
The rain ripped the lips off the mouth of the bay
And rendered the eye
And slighted the air and tricked the land and blew the air away

Then came a quiet
No one should know

Rich man's folly and poor man's dream
I'm painting these
While beavers build dams all around me