Heaven Began to Fall (a demo)

The rain in Atlanta started the day we moved to Tybee. And it didn’t stop until a 500-year flood had inundated the metro area. The yard at the house Melissa left behind became a lake. Luckily the water didn’t make it inside the house, but the basement flooded and the neighborhood was a mess. And while that added to the woes of trying to sell her house in a market still mired in the Great Recession, others weren’t so fortunate.

I never will forget the pictures of the flooded I-75 as it crossed the Chattahoochee River, which had risen beyond historic proportions. Whole subdivisions in Cobb and north Fulton were in ruins.

I wrote this song not long afterward.

What with recent flooding in South Carolina (a 1,000-year flood!), it seemed appropriate to record a demo of “Heaven Began to Fall.”

The above is just me and my guitar.

   Heaven Began to Fall

                                  (The Atlanta Flood of 2009)

it was a do-nothing summer
sliding into fall
we were waiting for something
just didn’t know what for.
we didn’t have much
but we thought we’d seen it all.
then the sky opened up
and heaven began to fall
(chorus):
it rains on the just and the rest of us
just like the big book says.
the water don’t care who you are
and where you lay your head.
a rich man’s treasures can’t shelter him
from a raging deluge
and whatever a poor man has
he’s bound to lose.

it poured out of the creeks,
the Peachtree and the Nancy,
it flooded the Suwanee
Yellow River and Big Creek.
then the Chattahoochee rose up
and overflowed the interstate.
And what came out of the sky
looked like the last days.
(chorus)

(bridge):

the rain came
and it poured
like we’d never seen
and it washed away
so many dreams

(chorus)

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