Release Date: May 6, 2003
The folk carvings of William Edmondson inspired Kate to write the songs for the Monuments album. The CD cover artwork is a photograph of “William Edmondson’s Sculpture Yard.”
Monuments was produced by Walt Aldridge. Musicians include Mac McAnally, Spooner Oldham, David Hood, Marty Raybon, Larry Franklin, Pat Buchanan, and Jonathon Yudkin.
“With a literate eye for detail and metaphor, Campbell weaves her country-folk tales like a masterly storyteller.” – Bill Ellis, Memphis Commercial Appeal
1. Yellow Guitar
I saw a man with a yellow guitar
Standing by the side of the road
Through the steam coming off the tar
Posing like some delta ghost
The sun was rising
It was shining
Halfway to Memphis
Halfway to Tupelo
There was a man with a yellow guitar
Standing by the side of the road
I shouldn’t have let him in my car
But his axe is what I had to hold
The sun was high then
It was frying
Halfway to Memphis
Halfway to Tupelo
I only stopped because I’d never seen
So bright a beautiful thing
My only want my only need
Was to hear it sing
There was this man with a yellow guitar
Standing by the side of the road
I knew that I was being charmed
By an angel or the devil I don’t know
The sun was dying
I was crying
Halfway to Memphis
Halfway to Tupelo
Kate Campbell
© 2001 Large River Music (BMI)
2. Corn In A Box
Saw the mark of a Pharaoh’s hand
In the middle of a field of sand
Seven wonders have come and gone
Only one’s still hanging on
Watched a man in sixty-nine
Take one small step for all mankind
Stuck a flag pole in the ground
Climbed back in his ship and came back down
Evolution’s almost through
There ain’t much left that we can’t do
Seems like a paradox
You can’t grow corn in a box
Still can’t grow corn in a box
They finally got this cloning down
So we got a bunch of sheep that look alike running round
Well I can’t wait to get my own
She can go to work while I stay at home
Some things change
Some things won’t
The more we know
The more we don’t
Kate Campbell and Walt Aldridge
© 2001 Large River Music (BMI) / April Music/Waltz Time Music (ASCAP)
3. Strangeness Of The Day
They say we’re made of atoms
That are much too small to see
And our world is just a part of
At least a million galaxies
Well I couldn’t say for certain
But I take it all on faith
Still I can’t help but wonder
At the strangeness of the day
If we’re spinning through the heavens
On a giant little ball
Don’t you think that it’s incredible
How we manage not to fall
You can say the laws of physics
Just make it work that way
But I can’t help but wonder
At the strangeness of the day
Most of our moments we live unaware
While miracles happen around everywhere
No matter what theories you choose to believe
Still it’s amazing you have to agree
I was talking to a good friend
Just the other night
She came across the ocean
Bouncing off a satellite
While I watched a purple sunset
She watched the dawn begin to break
And I had to stop and wonder
At the strangeness of the day
When I’m singing in this microphone
My voice comes out over there
Somehow my words are carried
By electrons through the air
Marconi did the math work
And we’ve got it all on tape
But I’ll never cease to wonder
At the strangeness of the day
I wake up and wonder
At the strangeness of the day
Kate Campbell and Walt Aldridge
© 2001 Large River Music (BMI) / April Music/Waltz Time Music (ASCAP)
4. Joe Louis’ Furniture
I’ve got a coffee table
Made of mahogany
With cigarette burns and water rings
But that don’t bother me
I bought it at an auction
Ten years ago
I put my feet up on it
And watch the fights on HBO
Float like a butterfly
Sting like a bee
I am the greatest
Said Muhammad Ali
Oh but I’ve got Joe Louis’ furniture in my den
Twelve years running world heavyweight champion
And in my book well he’s the best there’s ever been
And you can’t take that away from him
He came from Alabama
He didn’t come from much
He fought his way up to the top
Then lost his money to the government
So here I sit
In his old chair
Something about this
Don’t seem fair
Now I’ve worked hard
All my life
With nothing to show for it
But a poor man’s pride
Kate Campbell and Ira Campbell
© 2000 Large River Music (BMI)
5. New South
Friday morning I was down at the Starbucks
Sippin’ on a latte with the fat left out
I had a bagel and a sudden revelation
I’m finally living in the new south
They make Mercedes down in Vance, Alabama
And Tennessee is cranking Nissans out
I read about it in my Wall Street Journal
We’re all living in the new south
They’ll valet park you at the Galleria
They’ll hang your coat up for you at the door
They’ll take your check your MasterCard or VISA
They love our money at those Yankee stores
It’s getting hard to find good grits and gravy
I know you know what I’m talking about
Well that’s the price you have to pay for progress
And to be living in the new south
We pulled ourselves up out of Old Man River
And cut away all the kudzu vines
It took a while but I think we made it
We can finally put these blues behind
We traded in our boots for Italian loafers
And Bichon Frises are our new hounds
Thanks to Disney World and Coca-Cola
We’re finally living in the new south
Y’all come see us in the new south
Kate Campbell and Walt Aldridge
© 2002 Large River Music (BMI) / April Music/Waltz Time Music (ASCAP)
6. Petrified House
She sees the world through yellowing lace
The world hasn’t seen her since seventy-eight
Except for the nephew who used to look in
To bring her, her chocolate and tonic and gin
She lives in one room of a mansion downtown
With nothing but strip bars and strip malls around
It used to be three miles to those big stone gates
‘Til property taxes just whittled it away
She believes somehow that nothing has changed
Even though Sherman left Georgia in flames
Cotton’s still king and the south didn’t fall
As long as wisteria climbs up the wall
She won’t read the paper and won’t watch the news
She thinks it’s all lies made up by New York Jews
Her daddy said no matter what the laws say
Down here we’ve always done things our own way
Some day that petrified house will fall down
Like everything it will return to the ground
Whatever it stood for will all be condensed
To one paragraph on a plaque by the fence
Kate Campbell and Walt Aldridge
© 2001 Large River Music (BMI)/April Music/Waltz Time Music (ASCAP)
7. How Much Can One Heart Hold
Heard about a man from Birmingham
Went down to Selma to take a stand
How much can one heart hold
He sang some songs about peace and love
And took a beatin’ from a billy club
How much can one heart hold
How much can one heart hold
A pound of dirt or a pound of gold
We may never know the truth be told
How much can one heart hold
I met a woman who lost a son
On a chopper in South Saigon
How much can one heart hold
I couldn’t tell you all the tears she’s cried
I guess she’s gonna ‘til the day she dies
How much can one heart hold
If the heart is a bottomless pit
You gotta watch what you put in it
How much can one heart hold
Before you know it you’re carrying around
A ton of stuff that’ll weigh you down
How much can one heart hold
Kate Campbell and Walt Aldridge
© 2001 Large River Music (BMI)/April Music/Waltz Time Music (ASCAP)
8. The Way Home
If you’re ever in the Richmond Jail
With no one around to go your bail
If you’ve lost your way it might help to know
Jesus is the way home
If you’re trying to put that whiskey down
And you realize you’re losing ground
You don’t have to walk that road alone
Jesus is the way home
You don’t have to worry where you’re at
Or why you’re there he knows all that
You just let the Good Book be your map
Jesus is the way home
If you think nobody understands
And life’s not going like you planned
There’s a friend who’ll show you how to go
Jesus is the way home
There’s a garden down in Alabam’
Not too far south of Birmingham
Painted signs and crosses by the road
One says Jesus is the way home
For the Bible tells me so
Jesus is the way home
Kate Campbell and Walt Aldridge
© 2001 Large River Music (BMI)/April Music/Waltz Time Music (ASCAP)
9. William’s Vision
William Edmondson c. 1870 – 1951
William, what are you doing
And who are those monuments for
They’re for my heavenly daddy
And I’m doing the work of the Lord
So all will be remembered
So all will be released
From their earthly prison
All will be set free
William, how do you chisel
And where do you get your limestone
Neighbors and friends they bring it to me
And the good Lord he speeds me along
William, why do you make angels
And when will your work here be done
When I close my eyes for good on this world
And the angels carry me o’er Jordan
William had a vision
Straight from God in heaven
Pick up your hammer and chisel
And mark the graves of my children
Kate Campbell and Ira Campbell
© 2000 Large River Music (BMI)
10. Walk Among Stones
Stars fell on Alabama
Near the rocky shoals
In a casket factory
Where they found the soul
See that skinny boy there
Drinking him a Coke
Didn’t we just see him
On the Sullivan Show
Oh we walk among stones
Oh we walk among stones
Some say it was the cotton
And working side by side
All those alluvial layers
And time upon time
Or was it in the struggle
And crying to the Lord
Cause for one shining moment
They made hit records for the world
And now we’re left to wonder
What happened to the sound
Was it two kings dying
That nailed the coffin down
Kate Campbell and Mark Narmore
© 2001 Large River Music (BMI) /
Cake Taker Music/March Family Music/Sony ATV
Tree Music-BMI
Coming to a Kate Campbell album simply for entertainment is like entering a Paris bakery for white bread or an English pub for light beer. To Campbell, whose schedule more resembles that of a traveling revivalist than a folk singer (she was the featured performer at the recent Festival of Homiletics in Atlanta), entertainment isn’t an end in itself; rather, it is a tool to deftly nudge listeners toward a higher purpose, toward tolerance, commitment and understanding. Campbell’s sixth release since 1995 continues a string of thoughtful, literate, accessible records that have created for her a huge grassroots fan base. Thematically Monuments concerns itself with a broad range of Southern stereotypes and pokes huge holes in them. Campbell even muses about the homogenized “New South” with tongue firmly planted in her Southern cheek: “They’ll valet park you at the Galleria / they’ll hang your coat up for you at the door / They’ll take your check, your MasterCard of Visa / They love our money at those Yankee stores.” Songs like the mystical “Yellow Guitar” and “How Much Can One Heart Hold” offer fresh imaginative folk songwriting. Campbell smartly illustrates the Southern social tragedy with a vivid picture of an old woman who can’t accept modernity and change living alone in her “Petrified House,” while in “Joe Louis’ Furniture” Campbell chides us for callous racial attitudes that led to the great boxing champion’s furniture being auctioned to pay his taxes. In the deceivingly lighthearted “Corn In A Box,” Campbell takes a well-aimed shot at extremist on both sides who still make much of the interminable evolution controversy. Referencing scientific achievements like space flight and cloning, Campbell suggests that arguing evolution is tangential, even pointless when creation is the miracle: “Evolution’s almost through / There ain’t much left that we can’t do / Seems like a paradox / Still can’t grow corn in a box.” The album’s centerpiece, “William’s Vision,” is brilliantly composed as a conversation with tombstone maker William Edmondson, the first African-American to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (1937). Campbell ends the tune by succinctly summarizing Edmondson’s source of inspiration and life’s work: “William had a vision / Straight from God in heaven / Pick up your hammer and chisel / And mark the graves of my children.” Campbell’s Monument has been hand-carved with much the same artistry that informed Edmond’s work.
– William Michael Smith, Paste Magazine
Like its CD cover – an Edward Weston photograph of sculptures by self-taught artist William Edmondson – the music on Kate Campbell’s latest record, Monuments, is etched with a simple majesty. It’s tempting to call this album of exquisite portraits and devastatingly down-to-earth homilies by the Sledge, Miss., singer-songwriter her finest effort since 1997′s Moonpie Dreams – until you reach the Edmondson homage, “William’s Vision,” that is, and realize that Monuments is Campbell’s greatest testament yet: to faith, fortitude and the mythic power she can instill in the commonest of life’s subjects. With a literate eye for detail and metaphor, Campbell weaves her country-folk tales like a masterly storyteller, more Flannery O’Connor than, say, Mary Chapin Carpenter or Iris DeMent. On the tune “Joe Louis’ Furniture,” the working-class narrator becomes owner of the boxing legend’s coffee table and chair. ” I bought it at an auction 10 years ago,” Campbell sings. “I put my feet up on it and watch the fights on HBO.” Then there’s the Old South personification in “Petrified House,” an elderly woman who “sees the world through yellowing lace” and believes that “the south didn’t fall as long as wisteria climbs up the wall.” Not every song carries such an impact and a few suffer from affected arrangements. But the best truly takes you on a journey. Especially if you caught this year’s full-of-wonder Edmondson exhibit at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, you’ll want to hear Campbell’s entry into a South where chiseled angels take flight and the softest hearts of stone miraculously exist.
– Bill Ellis, Memphis Commercial Appeal