Song of the Week: Indigo Girls - Hammer and a Nail [Nomads Indians Saints] 1990

I don't mean to be telling tales out of school, but it was 72 degrees here on beautiful Tybee Island yesterday. Eschewing my usual weekend habits of sloth and procrastination, I got out of the house early yesterday. I met some friends at the park for an impromptu Sunday morning softball practice, stopped off at one couple's house and helped move a couple of shrubs and replant them, and then started some spring cleaning in anticipation of my dad and brother flying in from Cincinnati today. It wasn't quite a hammer and a nail, but it was as close as I get to a move in that direction.

For anyone else "prostrate to the higher mind" and caught in the dreaminess of winter time, this is the song for you---the greatest call to arms of any song I know.

I gotta get out of bed
Get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands
Not just my head
I think myself in a jail
Now I know a refuge never grows
From a chin in a hand
And a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth
If you want a rose

The Indigo Girls are undoubtedly my favorite lesbian non-couple, folk-rock, acoustic duo in music history. OK, seriously, their music is fantastic. They got their start in the same Georgia college rock scene that raised R.E.M. from the womb, and they came along on the heels of similar artists 10,000 Maniacs, Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, and Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians. It appeared that the duo was on their way to the big cash grab, hit-making machine in 1989 with the release of Closer to Fine. But despite a string of gems such as Watershed, Galileo, Least Complicated, and Cedar Tree, they seemed to prefer to stay rooted to their own values as opposed to being swept away by the tastes of a fickle pop scene. What did Jacques Barzun say, "there's no shame in watching the lemmings race by"?