Boney Earnest's Suburban Hilltop Tent Revue

Monday, October 17, 2005 ... 6:37 PM

Gillian Welch "Throw Me A Rope" lyrics, and so forth.

October 2007 update:Looking for an MP3 of this song? Write something about Gillian for the Tent Revue and I'll send it to you. Look here.

All you west coast Gillian Welch fans -- brothers, sisters -- stumbling onto this site from Seattle and San Francisco, damp and trembling still from your first Gil & Dave show one night this past week -- looking up that brilliant fucking song that sounds as though they reached down into your blue Jungian guts and pulled out the rockinest archetypes -- y'all searching Google and Yahoo for "Throw me a rope" and "without a crow flying by" and "Gillian Welch lyrics" -- hey, here you are:

The Way It Would Be (aka "Throw Me a Rope") lyrics

(Find a link to the chords here.)

I lost you a while ago.
Still I don't know why.
I can't say your name
without a crow flying by.

Gotta watch my back
now that you turned me around.
You got me walkin backwards
into my hometown.

Throw me a rope
on the rolling tide.
What did you want it to be?
You said it's him or me.
The way you made it,
that's the way it will be.

We were seven years on the Burma shore
with Gatling guns and (paint? pails? pain?),
working the lowlands door to door
like Latter Day Saints.

But then you turned me out
at the top of the stairs.
You took all the glory
that you just couldn't share.

Throw me a rope
on the rolling tide.
What did you want it to be?
You said it's him or me.
The way you made it,
that's the way it will be.

I've never been so disabused.
I've never been so mad.
I've never been served anything
that tasted so bad.

You might need a friend
any day now, any day.
O my brother be careful.
You are drifting away.

Throw me a rope
on the rolling tide.
What did you want it to be?
You said it's him or me.
The way you made it,
that's the way it will be.

The way you made it,
that's the way it will be.

While you're here, drop me a line, write a review. I'll put it up on the site. Tell us -- are they playing any new songs? Have they shaken up the setlist? Any surprise visitors?

And hey, check out some of my other Gil'n'Dave related entries. Holy shit, I never realized there are so many of them.

Who's the Revelator?
Gil & Dave Counterpoint From K.
Chance Encounter
Suburban Hilltop Tent Conversion
First Times

Brendan

4 Comments:

i heard them perform this in Hartford, Ct, and you could hear a pin drop. It was so intense...so beautiful.
Thanks for the lyrics. I figured out how to play this on my guitar, but was a little unsure of the lyrics.
Hopefully it'll be out on the next album

By Anonymous, at 12/15/2005 1:04 PM

I was just trying to find out more about this song after I heard it on a Prairie Home Companion rerun (available online at http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/20031101/index.shtml). Amazing song. I transcribed the chords and submitted them to olga.net...using your lyrics as a guide. Hope you don't mind. Thanks! Hopefully we will hear this on the next album!

By Anonymous, at 1/30/2006 11:57 PM

I wrote the management company, and they said next album.

Scott

By Scott, at 4/26/2007 6:37 PM

I first heard this song at several shows around San Francisco in 2006. The beauty of the vocals, the haunting quality of the lyrics, the rolling, pulsing, shimmering sound of the guitars... everything comes together to make this an unforgettable masterpiece. I keep checking their website to see if an album is due out soon because I need a recording of this mesmerizing, evocative song.

By Anonymous, at 8/24/2007 11:37 PM