Wishing Chair: Music

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This song tells the tale of an American terrorist from the Civil War. It was a difficult song to write because the protagonist is a Conferedrate and a killer... but he was also a young man who got trapped in circumstances much larger than he could handle. I was constantly struck with how Iraq like the story was.We feel this song is an anti war song.

Thirteen steps up to my grave no more the black flag will I wave

Preacher tells me I’ve been saved calling me Sue Mundy

Marcellus Clarke is my true name Simpson County’s pride and shame

Raising horses, hemp and slaves a son of old Kentucky


The Orphan Grey I did put on captured at Fort Donaldson with my pardon I walked home just a poor

Civilian but Brainbridge called in marshall law for every Federal dead now he’d hang four

Whispering behind their doors there goes a rebel soldier


So I took to murder then stealing horses, robbing men burning wagons, bending rails

we were always hungry Lord give me corn and give me beans faster horses and the means

To kill the Yankees as I please and take back my good country



When I was younger, fancy free I dressed in ladies finery

To make a proud girl notice me the boys called me Sue Mundy

When George Prentis heard this name he thought to bring the Yankees shame

He wrote that a guerrilla band was lead by a girl, Sue Mundy


The Federals then pressed us hard and trapped us in a farmers barn

I surrendered as a prisoner of war they said you’ll hang, said you’ll hang, said you’ll hang Sue Mundy



Retribution, sacrificial lamb no defense witness took the stand

Twelve thousand heard the band play the Dead March for Sue Mundy

When I was dead they rushed the gallows looking for greenbacks in my clothes

Left me naked in the bloody road and I was only twenty

Now God knows that war’s a sin sanctifying killing men

No one’s righteous in the end, a song of old Sue Mundy