Lyric Contest Winners: March/April 2018

Congratulations to all of our March/April 2018 winners! Click here to enter the May/June 2018 Lyric Contest.

1st Place
“Be Good To Your Woman”
Thurston Wilkes
Oxford, Mississippi

My grandmother was the old school kind
Came up in the Depression and left it behind
She and my granddad worked real hard
Down in south Mississippi selling cars

He died in ’66 at 52
Thirty-five years and she joined him too
She looked at me on her dying bed
And this is what she said

Be good to your woman
‘Cause they think real deep and they hurt real easy
Be good to your woman
It’s a promise to keep, you better believe me

She was strong and seldom wrong
She learned from life, and her life was long
I never knew him, and they say he was a saint
But he was a man, and sometimes a man can’t

Help but say things he didn’t plan
‘Cause a man is a man is a man is a man
And sometimes words stick in your mind
For a long, long, long, long, long, long time

Be good to your woman
‘Cause they think real deep and they hurt real easy
Be good to your woman
It’s a promise to keep, you better believe me

Keep your eyes on the prize
And buddy you will realize
Let love stay or let it slip away
Is your decision every day
Don’t mean to tell you what to do
But then again, I guess I do
Be good

God gave women such wonderful features
But they sure are mysterious creatures
What goes on in the female mind
Will keep you guessing ‘til the end of time

But just like a man’s just a grown-up boy
We all need wonder, we all need joy
It’s true across this whole world
Inside every old woman there’s a little girl

Be good to your woman
‘Cause they think real deep and they hurt real easy
Be good to your woman
It’s a promise to keep, you better believe me

2nd Place
“Crown Royal Bag (A Senior Year Story)”
Adam Cooper
Suwanee, Georgia

I was eighteen when my daddy died
His heart it stopped beating, the light left his eyes
That’s when I said, “I can’t take anymore”
And that’s when I learned what whiskey is for.

I keep my heart
In a Crown Royal bag
And I bust it out
Late at night when I’m sad
I drink through the good times,
I drink through the bad,
And I keep my heart
In a Crown Royal bag

Just three weeks later, my friend died in a crash
They went off the road, they was moving too fast
The loss of her soul, cut me to the core
And I furthered my studies, of what whiskey is for

I keep my heart
In a Crown Royal bag
And I bust it out
Late at night when I’m sad
I drink through the good times,
I drink through the bad,
And I keep my heart
In a Crown Royal bag

My love for a woman, led me astray
I was enchanted so easily by the things that she’d say
She said that she loved me, well she don’t anymore
And that right there friends is what whiskey is for

I keep my heart
In a Crown Royal bag
And I bust it out
Late at night when I’m sad
I drink through the good times,
I drink through the bad,
And I keep my heart
In a Crown Royal bag

I woke up this morning in the E.R.
My mom she said, “Son, do you know where your are?
We found you this morning, passed out on the floor.”
Cuz I know all too well, what whiskey is for

I keep my heart
In a Crown Royal bag
And I bust it out
Late at night when I’m sad
I drink through the good times,
I drink through the bad,
And I keep my heart
In a Crown Royal bag

3rd Place
“The Glitter Of Gold (Song To Save Bristol Bay)”
Robert Thatcher, Signal Mountain, Tennessee and
Tom Brown, Varnell, Georgia

Lord you know it’s a mighty long way
From Sutter’s Mill to Bristol Bay
But the story’s the same and must be told
We lose the land for the glitter of gold

The wagons came in long, long line
To find the gold of ’49
It’s a devil’s deal and we sell our souls
When we trade our riches for the love of gold.

Salmon swim from silver to red
From the bay to the riverbed;
Against the currents of our day
We must save our Bristol Bay.

Now they want to dig a two-mile hole
Right in the heart of Bristol’s soul
Scar the land and foul the stream
Seeking fortune in a golden seam

Slate blue waters — sparkling sun
Home to the last great salmon run
It’s a Bay of life, not a bay of tears
Way of life for ten thousand years

Chasing dollars and corporate greed
Can’t provide all the things we need
Beauty here can’t be bought or sold
We can lose it all — to a lust for gold

Gold can make a million things —
Shiny coins and fancy rings
But it can’t make a river — clean and cold
Don’t lose the land to the glitter of gold

Mountains quake — tides will rise
Winds will shake the angry skies
God made this land — and broke the mold
Don’t lose it all to the power of gold

4th Place
“Absence Of You”
Danielle Knibbe
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

I don’t miss songs I’ve never sung
Or books I’ve never read
I don’t mourn all I’ve left undone
Or the paths I’ll never tread
But I believe though I cannot prove it true
I would feel the absence of you

If we’d never met or said hello
Would a part of me have always known?
I suspect your name is written in the marrow of my bones
After other lips had kissed me
Would I notice something missing?

I don’t miss songs I’ve never sung
Or books I’ve never read
I don’t mourn all I’ve left undone
Or the paths I’ll never tread
But I believe though I cannot prove it true
I would feel the absence of you

In another life, where there was no you and me
And we had settled down with other[s] happily
What if one day on the street our eyes meet accidentally?
Would it hit me like a freight train?
A sudden ache that I could not explain

I don’t miss songs I’ve never sung
Or books I’ve never read
I don’t mourn all I’ve left undone
Or the paths I’ll never tread
But I believe though I cannot prove it true
I would feel the absence of you

For I knew from that first minute
My life was meant to have you in it

I don’t miss songs I’ve never sung
Or books I’ve never read
I don’t mourn all I’ve left undone
Or the paths I’ll never tread
But I believe though I cannot prove it true
I would feel the absence of you

Honorable Mention

“Scars”
Jacob Paul Allen
Nelson County, Virginia

“Over You”
Alicia Cook
Newark, New Jersey

“The Back Row”
David Lepage
Crozet, Virginia

“Graveyard”
Jennifer Schmitt
Ennis, Montana

“Smokey River”
David Cothrell
Milwaukie, Oregon

“Kids Of My Own”
Bill Kapac
West Wildwood, New Jersey

“The Artist”
Mark Gagnon
Bradenton, Florida

“Blondie’s Blue”
Kevin Stillman
Round Rock, Texas

“Loving You Full Time”
Robert Kearley
Jackson, Alabama

“Junkie Rules”
Jack Killen
Queens, New York