Music

Whitetail Woods Incident

banjo - danny barnes
vocal and woodbox - robbie fulks

In this song a deranged narrator takes his daughter into the woods to kill her -- I guess it's a downhome update on the old "I've got to walk out of here!" joke. These macabre stories were most often done in third-person back in the day, maybe to help make clear that this was a solemn reportage function being undertaken, not an exercise in cheap thrills. But the line is fine, isn't it? I would say the first person is more suitable to the era of "Saw, I through V."

Lyrics

The Whitetail woods, they ring Clark Mountain
Northwest of Kalispell
And when the snow lies deep upon them
Their secrets none can tell

It’s deep within those frost-rimed ridges
A young girl waits behind
No home she knows beyond Clark Mountain
And no man’s love but mine

The law gave me to take my daughter
To watch for just one day
So to the Whitetail woods I brought her
To roam the bright hours away

Through sunlit glades our path it wended
Her hand in mine held fond
And in her touch no mistrust entered
For blood is the strongest bond

Stone-calm, those woods, for miles no other
For none but we walked there
But in her laugh rang out her mother
And glittered in her golden hair

I seized a rock, I grabbed her roughly
For none but we walked there
What child, I cried, so frail and lovely
So dreadful a stain should bear

"My father," she said, “'tis I, your daughter,
These thoughts they bode no good.”
And as she spoke the sun sank lower
Till dark fell the Whitetail woods.

Three times I brought the rock down on her
Two times she pleaded "No"
Then white she turned, and with a shudder
She sank into the dirt below

Downhill I dragged her still warm body
Where the drifts would sure rise high
And with a shout, my rock cast from me
Far o'er the mountainside

Fly onward, child, to God’s own table
In death you’ll not repine
While on this earth you knew no evil
And no man’s love but mine

The Whitetail Woods, they ring Clark Mountain
Northwest of Kalispell
And when the snow lies deep upon them
Their secrets none can tell

Tonight I’ll rest here on Clark Mountain
Tomorrow the first snowfall
And I’ll be long gone deep in the Yukon
Well before the April thaw

Guitar Chords/Tab

Guitar chords/tab are not available for this song