The Red Rose and the Briar Lyrics

The Red Rose And The Briar
by John Wesley Harding
from the album "Here Comes The Groom"
INTRODUCTION
In the tablature for the introduction, the symbols "^" and "v" denote
down-strums and up-strums. The C-chords are played using the
fingering by Wes, but the fingering isn't very different. It
sounds pretty good if you change the pattern slightly, too - either by
doing only single downstrums (no upstrums) in most of the intro, or by
playing with fingers, using the thumb to play the bass run and the
index, middle and ring fingers to play the treble chords. Wes plays
with a pick, and I've found my usual favourite (a 0.60 mm John Dunlop
nylon type) too stiff to comfortably do the double strums at the right
speed. My only thinner pick was a 0.38 mm Jim Dunlop nylon pick which
makes the double strums easy but is a bit too pliable to let me
emphasise the bass runs, so I got a 0.46 mm JD which is the best for
my acoustic guitar but the optimum depends on you and your guitar.
CHD: G C G Em
^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ ^ v ^
CHD: G C G
^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^
CHORDS AND LYRICS (Bass runs are shown in square brackets and
Midweek and we reached Scarlet town
I was almost dying of thirst
We parked the car in some old schoolyard
The windscreen caked in dirt
There was no water in the engine
Left no tread upon the tyres
The electrics were broke 'cause you went mad
You ripped out all the wires
Across the road, a small cafe
In the state of Disrepair
You went for papers and a shave
So I saved you a chair
I knew it wasn't the journey's end
And that your dream was incomplete
But I just could not stand anymore
I was dead upon my feet
I was dead upon my feet
There's nothing there in the market square
But the ghost of the Scarlet town-crier
I was dead upon my feet
I sing the red rose and the briar
Am Am/B C D (G in intro)
I sing the red rose and the bri-ar
The waitress told me her life story
She'd always meant to up and go
She wiped her cup on her red pinafore
As we waited for you to show
And I told her just a little of you
But left the picture incomplete
You still weren't there to paint it in person
So I skipped out on the street
I skipped out on the street
The newsagent grinned, he said that you'd been in
You bought a local paper and some shaves
And the washroom attendant said that you'd freshened up
That you'd left but you hadn't payed
And I couldn't figure out where you were
So I went back to look near the car
There's nothing there where it should have been
Just oil on dirt and tar
Just oil on dirt and tar
There's nothing there in the market square
But the ghost of the Scarlet town-crier
And there's nothing there where it should have been
I sing the red rose and the briar
I sing the red rose and the briar
Am C D (G in intro)
I saw it parked way down the street
In a garage off on the right
And a man said, "Get your hands off, son
I just traded that wreck for a motorbike"
There was nothing left of mine inside
Not even the broken radio-o-o
And I couldn't figure out where that left me
So I went back to look for Rose
The Cafe Rouge was a lunchtime rush
Of regulars yelling for food
And the service in there left a lot to be desired
All the regulars were getting rude
I saw an apron thrown over a chair
A note said, "Hey John, we're gone, we're gone"
And I just smiled 'cause I loved you both
So I put the apron on
I put the apron on
Still nothing there in the market square
But the ghost of the Scarlet town-crier
Well I just put the apron on
I sing the red rose and the briar
I sing the red rose and the briar
I sing the red rose and the briar
Am C D (G in intro)
I sing the red rose and the briar
In Scarlet town where I was born
There was a fair maid dwellin'
Oh, the colour of her hair was brown
And her name......
And her name was......
And her name was......
C D (G in intro)
NOTES
0. According to Stephen M. Webb , "her name was..."
Barbara Allan as in the song "Barbara Allan" which takes place in
`Scarlet Town where I was born,' ends up with a rose and briar.
I don't have this song, so I didn't know this. I though it might have
been Helen from "I went to visit Helen by St. Helen's Park" (which is
in Hastings, where Wes used to live) from the song "Pound, Pound, Pound"
on the live & unaccompanied album "It Happened One Night".
1. Many thanks to Patrick Barnett for his
generosity and help in compiling this posting and Chris Inglesi
for pointing out the fact that it's "fair maid
dwellin'" rather than "family dwellin'" which I had at first.
2. All the chords are pretty much the basic fingerings but Wes uses a
modified Em and Em7 is . For those of you
unfamiliar with CRD notation, the chords with a slash such as C/B denote
chords played with a different bass-note to usual. The part before the
slash is the chord and the note after it is the bass note. So C/B is a
basic C chord but with the bass-note changed to B becoming
. In fact you needn't worry too much about the 2nd fretted
D string. What is important to note is that the bass-note is played on
the most convenient string, not always on the bass-E string. In this
song, the bass-note doesn't actually have to be the lowest note played -
I've used this notation to denote the bass notes in the bass-strum
style.
3. Feel free to email me with any comments (see header for email address)
or to request tabs for songs. If you have a favourite JWH song you'd
like me to have a go at, let me know. I now have the four full albums,
"The Name Above The Title", "It Happened One Night", "Why We Fight" and
"Here Comes The Groom". If I haven't got the songs, I could only do
them if you send me an audio tape with them on. If you could work out
the lyrics, that would be a great help. The songs I've tabbed/chorded
so far are:
From "The Name Above The Title":
I Can Tell (When You're Telling Lies)
Save A Little Room For Me
The People's Drug
The Person You Are
Long Dead Gone } lyrics supplied by
Backing Out } Alan Pulliam - thanks
from "It Happened One Night":
Roy Orbison Knows (The Best Man's Song)
- thanks to Will Vaughan & "Sen"
Kiss/Lovers' Society
and from "Here Comes The Groom"
The Red Rose And The Briar } thanks to Patrick Barnett
and coming soon, the version not from "Here Comes The Groom" of
When The Sun Comes Out } thanks to Patrick again
These are archived on the guitar tab archives, ftp.nevada.edu and its
mirror sites such as ftp.uwp.edu - you can find local mirror sites by
using a program such as "archie". Cal Woods & Jim Carson, the new
maintainers of the Nevada archive have kindly placed in it a file to aid
archie searches. It is called "Nevada.Guitar.Archive". You can find
the guitar directory of any nearby mirror sites using:
unix% archie -m5 -N Nevada.Guitar.Archive
Host unix.hensa.ac.uk
Location: /pub/uunet/doc/music/guitar
FILE -r--r--r-- 80 Jun 16 09:21 Nevada.Guitar.Archive
Wes's tabs are archived under ???/guitar/h/john_wesley_harding
4. The FTP archive at Trinity College Dublin (ftp.maths.tcd.ie) has also
uploaded a lot of Wes songs in the directory:
/pub/music/guitar/h/john_wesley_harding
In addition to the songs I've worked out, there is a copy of Crystal
Blue Persuasion, originally by Tommy James and the Chandelles (sp?)
which appears on "The Name Above The Title". There doesn't appear to be
a mirror site to Trinity College Dublin.
5. Enjoy!
Regards,
Ryan Kingsley Harding (no relation at all to Wes, aka. Wesley Harding Stace)
Ryan Harding Applied Optics Group, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.
"Now no-one's sitting on the fence, whose garden will we end up sitting in?"
- John Wesley Harding, "The Person You Are" from "The Name Above The Title"