You have very likely never heard this song before, and it grips you right from the start. There is Buddy Mondlock’s trademark sweet steel-string guitar and soothing voice, but in contrast to much of his other, subtler material, this story is heart-stoppingly dramatic.
Mondlock sings from the point of view of his co-writer, Wade Bates, who had been an Army infantryman stationed in Afghanistan when a little girl outfitted with a bomb vest begins walking toward him and the base. Bates worked with Mondlock to process the trauma of that experience. In our last episode, we spoke with Mondlock about what it was like to be paired with a veteran (by Music Therapy of the Rockies) to write a song. He spoke about how his initial instinct was to refer only glancingly to the traumatic event in question.
Mondlock said he thought, “maybe I shouldn’t write that into the song. But he wrote me back and goes, I really want to tell that story. To me, that honors her in some way, too. I was crying all the way through the writing process,” Mondlock said. “That empathy, that’s a really necessary part of the job.”
In this episode, Mondlock also speaks about the origins of his singular song, “The Kid,” and what it was like to co-write with Art Garfunkel and Janis Ian. And we speak about how he fee-centers himself after writing about difficult subjects. The episode ends with the song “The Tower” in its entirety. Listen and then, if you haven’t already, go back and listen to part one of our conversation with Mondlock about the song’s origins.
Here are the lyrics to “The Tower,” by Wade Bates and Buddy Mondlock:
CHORUS
Don’t dry my tears, I earned them/ Don’t drown me in them either
Just let me find my own way through/ The only thing that I could do
In the quiet dawn I see her
Just a little girl
On her way to school
How could she imagine/The world could be so cruel
I’m watching from my tower/ A rifle in my hands
A farm boy from West Texas/ A stranger in a strange land
They pour out of the car
These men who then surround her
I know not what they say
But their words have surely bound her
Do they threaten her family? Her brother in the field
Her mother by the river
Do they offer her a deal?
CHORUS
Don’t dry my tears, I earned them/Don’t drown me in them either
Just let me find my own way through/The only thing that I could do
In the quiet dawn I see her
She’s walking to me/Tears are on her face/Her coat is missing’A vest in its place
I call out to her
And say she must turn back/The cruel men won’t let her/The sun is turning black
I try to warn her
My first shot at her feet /The second finds her/Then all is sound and heat
Don’t try and tell me
It’s God’s will in the end
God made the earth and stars/But war is made by men
CHORUS
Don’t dry my tears, I earned them/Don’t drown me in them either
Just let me find my own way through/The only thing that I could do
In the quiet dawn I see her
Some day I know I’ll meet her