Tear It Down (feat. Allison Russell)

You say I miss the old ways, but not like that

Dog whistling fool of a king

Don't you know that old Dixieland

Is more than dirt roads and simple ways?

Tear it down, tear it down, that

Ragged cross of race

I don't guess that we deserve all this

The beauty and the light

The way the firefly returns in June

As dusk sings her lullaby

All the lives that fertilized

And the manifested hand

The human bondage that provides

The bounty of this land

Tear it down, ah, tear it down, that

Ragged cross of race

The stone and the ore beaten into monuments that

Rose out of hate

I was that lonely kid in old cinemas

Watching Gone with the Wind

Tradition runs the core of me

The song of the south, "Whistling Dixie" again

Oh, that tune lived and breathed in me

And it wants to live again

We must fight with all our might

To kill that racist hymn

And tear it down, ah, tear it down, that

Ragged cross of race

The stone and the ore beaten into monuments that

Rose out of hate

The epitaph I long to read is

"Here lies slavery"