NO FINER HOUR

[Female Vocal]

[Intro]

Sand Beach, on the Huron side

April, and the ice still wide

[Verse 1]

A lawyer's boy on the harbor wall

Counting freighters, naming them all

Mary Brennan calls him in

Wash your hands and say Amen

[Verse 2]

His father's books are bound in brown

A country lawyer in a harbor town

He reads the words he cannot say

And means to say them all one day

[Pre-Chorus]

The lake is cold, the town is small

The boy is looking past the wall

[Drop]

Go on, Frank, the road runs south

Carry the lake inside your mouth

Ann Arbor first, then Detroit town

Don't let the big rooms talk you down

Go on, Frank, go on

[Drop 2]

Go on, Frank, the road runs south

Carry the lake inside your mouth

Ann Arbor first, then Detroit town

Don't let the big rooms talk you down

Go on, Frank, go on

[Verse 3]

A captain's bars in Germany

Then London law across the sea

Dublin rain on a borrowed coat

And a Sand Beach vowel still in his throat

[Outro]

Go on, Frank, go on

[Fade Out]

[End]

[Male Vocal]

[Intro]

September, and the street is full

A doctor's porch, a crowd, a pull

[Verse 1]

He bought a house on Garland Avenue

Paid his money like the neighbors do

Second night, the stones came down

A shot went off across the town

[Verse 2]

Now a family sits in a courtroom row

Mister Darrow rising slow

The young judge leans, the room goes still

The papers want it quick, for the kill

[Pre-Chorus]

Outside they've settled what is true

Inside he says we'll hear it through

[Drop]

Let the record show

Every word, fast or slow

A man's home, a man's door

Same law on every floor

Recorder's Court, let the record show

[Drop 2]

Let the record show

Every word, fast or slow

A man's home, a man's door

Same law on every floor

Recorder's Court, let the record show

[Verse 3]

The first one hung, so they tried again

Henry Sweet and twelve white men

Not guilty, said the foreman's hand

And no one else was made to stand

[Outro]

Let the record show

[Fade Out]

[End]

[Male Vocal]

[Intro]

[Rap]

Whistle don't blow, gate don't move

Thirty-one, and nothing left to prove

[Verse 1]

Punched that clock for eleven years

Now the line I stand in don't make no gears

Hundred thousand of us out in the cold

Lunch pail empty, both shoes resoled

Landlord knocking, baby needs bread

City Hall lights still on, they said

[Verse 2]

Mayor Murphy got a committee up

Churches, unions, filled my cup

Soup in the pot, a coat on my back

Even found a lawyer for the rent I lack

[Pre-Chorus]

Bank says wait, the plant says gone

Somebody in this town kept the lights on

[Drop]

Relief line, wrap around the block

Detroit don't fold when the money stop

Feed them first, argue later

Whole city in it, no spectator

Relief line, hold your spot

[Drop 2]

Relief line, wrap around the block

Detroit don't fold when the money stop

Feed them first, argue later

Whole city in it, no spectator

Relief line, hold your spot

[Verse 3]

Mayors rolled in from coast to coast

Sat down in Detroit, he played the host

Took it to the White House, what a city needs

You can't run a town on a banker's creed

[Outro]

Relief line, hold your spot

[Fade Out]

[End]

[Female Vocal]

[Intro]

Malacañang, the river slow

A Michigan man with a long way to go

[Verse 1]

The fans turn over the palace floor

Petitions waiting at every door

The planters bow, the planters smile

The tenant farmer walks his mile

[Verse 2]

May came hard and the fields rose up

Rifles answered, the cost was rough

Now the cells are full of barefoot men

He writes their names and asks again

[Pre-Chorus]

Last of his office, first of the next

An island learning to write its own text

[Drop]

Let them go, let them go home

The rice is tall and they've been gone too long

Let them go, Manila Bay

A Harbor Beach man is sailing away

Let them go

[Drop 2]

Let them go, let them go home

The rice is tall and they've been gone too long

Let them go, Manila Bay

A Harbor Beach man is sailing away

Let them go

[Verse 3]

He packed the islands in a trunk

Carved wood and cloth and a songbook, sunk

Deep in a house on the Huron shore

You can still go knock upon that door

[Outro]

Let them go

[Fade Out]

[End]

[Male Vocal]

[Intro]

Cold enough to crack the glass

Fisher Body, and nobody pass

[Verse 1]

We shut the line and we sat right down

On the seats we built for the folks uptown

The diner cross the street sends stew

Through the window, hand to you

[Verse 2]

January, and the bulls came in

Gas in the stairwell, guns and tin

So the hinges flew and the bottles too

Bolts in the dark till the night was through

[Pre-Chorus]

Then trucks rolled up with the soldiers' load

We watched them line up on the road

[Drop]

The Guard faces out

Rifles to the street, not the door

The Guard faces out

Governor's order, nothing more

Sit down, sit down, hold the floor

[Drop 2]

The Guard faces out

Rifles to the street, not the door

The Guard faces out

Governor's order, nothing more

Sit down, sit down, hold the floor

[Verse 3]

A court said clear them, he would not sign

Kept both sides on the table line

Forty-four days and the paper came

One page long with the union's name

[Outro]

Sit down, sit down

[Fade Out]

[End]

[Male Vocal]

[Intro]

December, and the marble's cold

A wartime case, a story told

[Verse 1]

Families tagged and put on trains

Behind the wire on the desert plains

The Court says war, the Court says need

Six of them sign and the page agrees

[Verse 2]

He wore the uniform, he knows the drill

He knows an order from a people's will

He takes the pen, he takes his time

And writes a word they've never signed

[Pre-Chorus]

No one had put it in that book

He set it plain so they'd have to look

[Drop]

Call it by its name

Racism, in the record, by its name

I dissent, he wrote, and signed

From this legalization, line by line

Call it by its name

[Drop 2]

Call it by its name

Racism, in the record, by its name

I dissent, he wrote, and signed

From this legalization, line by line

Call it by its name

[Verse 3]

All of us kin to a foreign land

Every one of us, where we stand

He named the ugly abyss that day

And the word stayed put when they looked away

[Outro]

Call it by its name

[Fade Out]

[End]

[Female Vocal]

[Intro]

July, and the ward is still

Henry Ford, a window sill

[Verse 1]

A wedding set a month away

He never saw the wedding day

Fifty-nine, and the heart gave out

Detroit woke to the newsboys' shout

[Verse 2]

They called him Saint and meant it mean

Too much heart for the marble scene

Mercy, laughed the clever men

He wrote for the unloved, again and again

[Pre-Chorus]

Ten thousand came to walk him through

The city he had answered to

[Drop]

No finer hour

When the law stands up for the least in the room

No finer hour

Cut through the noise, cut through the gloom

No finer hour, no finer hour

[Drop 2]

No finer hour

When the law stands up for the least in the room

No finer hour

Cut through the noise, cut through the gloom

No finer hour, no finer hour

[Verse 3]

Back up the shore to the Huron side

Where a lawyer's boy watched the freighters ride

A hall in Detroit carries his name

And the word he wrote still makes its claim

[Outro]

Home, on the Huron side

[Fade Out]

[End]