Don’t Tread on Me

There's a courthouse on the square where the old boys cut the deals

Red clay under the fingernails, rust bleeding through the steel

Everybody tips the sheriff, everybody shakes the hand

Everybody's got a cousin who can make a ledger stand

But I walked into the records with a lantern and a pen

Counting what they buried, naming every sin

"Don't tread on me," son, that's what the rattler said

Coiled in the Peedmont grass where the Old Dominion bled

They'll smile to your face, and they'll bury you in kind

These foothills kept their secrets, but brother, now they're mine

So, Don't tread on me

There's a river cuts the holler like a scar across the chest

And the men who run the money keep their conscience well-suppressed

They'll baptize you on Sunday, call you brother, call you son

Then they'll take your name in darkness for a favor to be done

I came down from the mountains with a truth they can't unsay

And a God who knew my name before I ever learned to pray

"Don't tread on me," son, that's what the rattler said

Coiled in the Peedmont grass where the Old Dominion bled

They'll smile to your face, and they'll bury you in kind

These foothills kept their secrets, brother, but now they're mine

So, Don't tread on me

There's a word in Ecclesiastes, every secret thing gets weighed

There's a badge behind the courthouse, there's a debt that must be paid

You can buy the good ol' boys, you can gavel down the poor

But you can't outrun the reckoning; it's already at the door

"Don't tread on me," son, that's what the rattler said

Coiled in the Peedmont grass where the Old Dominion bled

They'll smile to your face, and they'll bury you in kind

But the gallows and the gospel, they always find the line

So Don't tread on me

Lord, don't tread on me

Don't tread on me