Chords for Wade Hemsworth with Kate and Anna McGarrigle: The Shining Birch Tree (1992)

And then when you decided, when you got a job as a draftsman and surveyor, that's what took you north.
Mm-hmm.
I came back home to Toronto, _ [G] and as I said, I felt that I was full of my experience in the woods.
I'd never been in the woods that way before, and I was very impressed with it, and [D] consequently I wanted to express [A] it in music.
_ [D] _
_ [Bm] _ _ [D] _ _ If you ask any [G] girl from the parish around [A] what pleases her most from her head to [D] her toes,
she'll say, I'm not sure that it's [Em] business of yours, [A] but I do like to waltz [D] with a log driver,
for he goes [Dm] purlin' down and [G] down white water.
That's [A] where the log driver learns to step lightly.
It's [Gbm] purlin' [G] down and down white water.
[D] The log driver's waltz [A] pleases [D] girls completely.
[Bm] _ _
_ [D] _ Look who's [Db] here.
Hi.
How are you?
Nice to see you.
It's been a long time.
Oh, yes.
I was trying to think when.
Kate and Anna McGarigle, who like to waltz with a log driver.
They're Wade Hemsworth's biggest fans.
How do you do?
We saw you this summer.
Yeah, that's right.
I [A] first met the McGarigles for a CBC interview about 15 years ago, but Wade has known them since they were still in high school
and wondering how to break into the folk music scene in Montreal.
Did you see it?
No.
Oh, yes.
You're a Canadian.
We were asked.
On July the 1st, the McGarigles and I and other Canadians were asked by the Toronto Globe and Mail
to name our cultural heroes.
Anna McGarigle chose Wade Hemsworth.
When did you first sing Wade's songs?
Oh, I think maybe in, what was that, Wade?
I don't know, the early [Db] 1960s.
Yeah.
It was before you were singing professionally.
Oh, yes.
Three years ago.
_ He was a [A] hero on the folk circuit in Montreal and he was kind of considered very _ bohemian.
And we were just kind of getting into it.
You were bohemian.
Well, you were kind of bohemian.
He still is.
And we were just kind of getting into that light side.
What other [Bb] first?
I don't know.
I used to go to Ann Arbor.
I had [Gb] friends in Ann Arbor and they'd all sit around and they'd sing the Blackfly song and they'd say,
[Bb] and they'd introduce it from the stage and say, this is an old folk song collected [D] in Canada.
And I'd say, wait a second, a friend of mine wrote that.
[Gb] I mean, they actually didn't, you know,
they thought these were songs that were [Gm] collected in the Northwoods.
We knew who the person was [D] behind it.
[B] So it made me proud to know. _
_ [Db] What do you think of [N] Wade's singing?
I think it's great.
I like Wade's singing very much.
It's perfect.
In some ways, [Bb] you know, when the person writes a song, you prefer to hear them [F] sing it than to have anybody else sing it.
Including [Gbm] yourself.
No matter how wonderful it can be.
That's right.
Yeah.
I [D] know what you mean.
Well, there's a certain formality that Wade gives.
It's something [N] like, for instance, like the old rooster,
which is really about, you know, the suddenly you're out of the Northwoods and you're in the good world.
So it's kind of like, you know, kind of, I mean, it's the only way you can take it.
_ _ _ _ Once I met an old rooster all tattered with living.
His hackles were torn by the taking and the giving.
He said the taking and the giving is not all as I choose.
You put forth your hand and your knuckles get bruised.
And whether what's wise or foolish, foolish or true hangs on the way you go.
Cockadoodle doo. _ _ _ _
Have you ever sung?
Have you sung that?
No, it's a male song.
I don't think I've ever heard anybody except Wade sing that song.
[D] It's impossible to sing.
You have to be Wade to sing it.
[N] Maybe you have to be an old rooster to sing it.
Well, not old hens.
I don't think of them as old hens.
Maybe foolish you.
Wade said that you sang using foolish you more than he could.
You've taken it away from him and he wasn't grudging that or anything.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
Sure.
All you ever said was a woman's song.
You say, girls, now, here are the women's songs.
There's a log driver's waltz.
Kate, you'll do the log driver's waltz and Anna, you'll do foolish you.
Those two songs, they'd be long to hear.
And also the use of the waltz is nice because you don't see waltz very much.
But it kind of brings back like the log driver's waltz and then _ _ the other song, the one, oh, the Land of the Muskeg.
The Land of the Muskeg, which really gives that kind of feeling of, it's kind of a bittersweet feeling to kind of like a loneliness in some cases.
You know, there's it's so few people, you know, writing waltz.
[Ebm] It's nice.
_ _ Muskeg in the shining [G] birch tree.
[Eb] _ _ Then come the in between seasons [Ab] of the freeze [Eb] up for the thaw in this.
Let's go.
[Bb] Hey, look out.
Let's go.
[Eb] For some fun [Bb] with the girls in the town, the [D] girls in the town.
_ [Cm] The [Bb] popular guy when his money flows free from the land.
The land of the Muskeg and the shining birch tree.
_ _ Muskeg and the shining birch tree.
_ [Eb] _ Men with the huskies are a howling in the [B] cold winter's dawn.
_ Then [Eb] he'll recall, oh, how he'll recall, that he spent all his [Bb] money with the girls in the [Cm] town, the [Dm] girls in the [Gm] town.
_ _ [C] So, boy, save your money or you'll all [Cm] be like me [C] in the land of the [Eb] Muskeg and the shining birch [Gm] tree.
_ [Cm] Muskeg [Gb] and the shining [Eb] birch tree.
_ [Bb] _ [Eb] _ _ _ [A] _ _ [N] _