Excellent Trouble

Written June 2006

Tab A, capo 7

3_EXTROU

hey you, let’s find some excellent trouble,
I think it’s high time we rose from this rubble,
we 2 should become partners in crime,
turn on a dime, leave them all guessing tonight
let’s earn a bad reputation,
and fight to shake up this sad situation,
we might inspire the next generation
to keep asking why, to never say “die,”
+++ excellent trouble, there for the making
+++ we’ll burst a few bubbles, right there for the breaking,
+++ a loose coalition of lovers and skeptics,
+++ poets and vagabonds, beggars and mystics,
+++ excellent trouble, only the finest,
+++ we’ll color fluorescently outside the lines
+++ so when, dour-faced, they ask us why we can’t stop smiling,
+++ it’s just that it’s all so unbearably beautiful..

hey, you, have you been searching for courage,
all through dressers and boxes in storage?
unsure where you left what you are made of,
among letters and yearbooks, and sweaters and such,
what if everything we have discarded
is just ballast we drop as we gradually lift
up out of gravity’s sway? birds don’t obey,
why hesitate when there’s
+++ excellent trouble, there for the making
+++ we’ll burst a few bubbles, they’re there for the breaking,
+++ a loose coalition of lovers and skeptics,
+++ prophets and heretics, poets and mystics,
+++ excellent trouble, only the finest,
+++ we’ll color fluorescently outside the lines,
+++ so when, dour-faced, they ask us why we can’t stop crying,
+++ it’s just that it’s all so unspeakably beautiful..
+++++ my only wish is to honor this gift
+++++ to practice my part and the jaywalker’s art,
+++ so when, dour-faced, they ask us why we can’t stop smiling,
+++ it’s just that you’re all so unbearably beautiful..
excellent trouble.. excellent trouble…


This song was inspired by a photo caption on someone’s MySpace profile (no longer there). The photo showed this person arm-in-arm with a friend at a bar, and the caption was “this night was trouble… but excellent trouble…” I really liked “Excellent Trouble” as a phrase, and thought it might make a good song title/idea. About 24 hours later, driving down from Harrisonburg to Charlottesville (Virginia), played it for the first time in a half-finished state at the Mudhouse, then finished it on the way back (singing to myself, and then worked the guitar stuff out later).

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