A collection of songs from throughout WW's discography performed solo around the U.S. in 2022

In Case I Die (Live)

Don’t take the following words as reverence for tradition
I’ve learned to pick my battles by losing most I’ve fought.
The more mores subverted, the more I sense I’m missing
And I’ll always do it my way, even if that’s just the same way I was taught.

I’ll bring home the bread and you’ll stay home and bake it
Weeding out the garden where the milestones gather moss
Crack a smile at my vows, and whisper “wow, can you believe we really made it?”
As I give up on dodging rice, and fold my cape, I say “obviously not.”

But I want to be just like my parents before I was born
Oh can we be just like my parents?

I know you don’t want kids but think about a daughter
We could name her Gwendolyn, like mom would have called me.
I’m not sure yet myself, but I learned from a good father
Yeah, I mean sure, they messed me up. But I think that’s just the gig.

And maybe it’s just some hormones that kick in in your late twenties
But I have laid a lot of women, and now I’d like to just lay down
And marriage always scared me, but I’d like to have a last love
And love can last a pretty good long while. I’ve seen it around.

Oh, can we be just like my parents when I was young?
Why can’t we be just like my parents?

Tongue out of my cheek now, I’m done pulling faces
Iconoclasm wanes. My cynicism tires
But what do I know bout forever when so far, I’ve been so fleeting?
Babe, my frontal lobe’s done growing; this might just be how I’m wired
But now we’re kissing before brushing, smile with our whole faces
If you want a hyphen last name I guess I don’t mind the cadence
I’ve seen home videos. I was there back in the 80’s
And if I’m just them and they back then could do it, why can’t I?

Just like my parents in due time
Imagine me, just like my parents? Yeah, right.

‘Cause I’ve made more mistakes, than simple empty moments
Each one as out of character as you know I tend to be
There’ll be scalpers at the cemetery gates, with all my would-be widows weeping
I’d have forgotten all their names, so why should you remember me?

But if we grow old together and you talk to my headstone,
That is, assuming that I die first, (which is fair) and assuming I don’t leave
Close enough to forever, I guess, to prove what I hoped.
I mean otherwise how am I to believe?

Becoming the Lastnames - City Winery, Nashville, TN

I’m that first-person they talk about in all the books
I’m that perspective you cannot doubt, see how I look
Control the narrative reliably, baby it’s all about me
And I wrote the book about throwing the book at those who
Don’t do it by it
So now I’m holding myself hostage, Stockholm lust just looks like justice
And enough lefts don’t make the right but two wrongs do
Oh man, Sun Tzu would love this.
Beating my dead high horse off the high road to low ground cause
If you shake your fist at snakes in grass it looks like punching down.

So God forbid I’m seen just as an average human being
I mean, imagine if protagonists just died in the first scene
I’m the gap between a tragedy and comedy, don’t come at me
I’m the main character, and you have to like me

I loot plot-armor from NPC’s, well they are to me
Trite tropes, traits, traumas, trinkets, and treats. It’s all XP. Look in the
Sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s super-ego! The underdog you cheer for
Villains are everywhere, that’s how I know I’m the hero
So tie me to the train tracks, laugh and snidely twist your mustache, Snidely Whiplash
Boris Badinov, ignorin’ me’s bad enough, where do you get off?
Da, das vadanya darling, Daleks in high collars monologue 
And I outsmart them with a ray-gun and a tweet

So God forbid I’m seen just as an average human being
I mean, imagine if protagonists just died in the first scene
I’m the gap between a tragedy and comedy, don’t come at me
I’m the main character, and you have to like me

Judge me by what my cover shows, author becomes beyond reproach
You don’t know the prose, or if the spine is still intact.
Oh, like Alice fell to wonderland, come astroturf my Overton
Embolden my demand to live by alternative facts.

Her majesty says "the royal we demand a standard loyalty” 
An agreement to be reverent, lick the emperor’s new boots.
The court fool got the guillotine, the witches the stake, you the dopamine 
And Siemens made the Zyklon B, but we all still get the flu. (It’s nothing new)
We all do what we need to to get through.
But I ain’t done a fucking thing to you.

So god forbid I’m seen just as an average human being, I mean
Imagine if antagonists lacked any evil scheme
I’m the gap between a tragedy and comedy, don’t come at me
I’m the main character and you have to like me.

The Main Character - The Vermont Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA

The greener grass grows where the wildfires fertilize
With ashes of sparrows, peppered moths, and butterflies
Ghosts of trees and termites bloom in the beanstalk

And if you get lightheaded when standing too fast
Is it from shaking out the weight of phosphenes and pasts
Salt deposits on warm little rivers that burst from our words

And god knows crying ain’t gonna change a thing
She said “take care,” but I take more than I bring.

She said “It just feels inhumane to lose this much”
Cause when you leave, you know you take more than your love
Just one week of cicada days we’re losing touch
And I know it just feels inhumane to lose this much.

Our nerves were braided under ceiling stars, they were all
Glow-in-the-dark, hanging over queen-sized 
Purple waves of ancient chemicals
Just whisper

Did you ever build with those endangered bones?
Well the ground looks soft enough to bury this now
Oh please, oh no.

And then my sponsor said “Do nothing. Nothing works.”
And it really did.
And then my doctor said “Don’t do that if it hurts.”

She said “It just feels inhumane to lose this much.”
Cause when you leave, you know you take more than your love.
The seasons of cicada days we can’t make up
And I know it just feels inhumane to lose this much.

Let all my red flags fade to white, yeah, I give up
Don’t let me leave, I’ll only take more than I gave. Okay, I’ll pack my stuff
Here at the end of days, my god, what have I done?
Christ now it feels damn inhumane to get all I've dreamed of

Keep coming back, it works if you work it
So work it, you’re worth it, it won’t if you don’t
One day at a time, tomorrow’s too late, amen.

Cicada Days - Knitting Factory, Spokane, WA

I don’t owe you my heart, and I don’t owe you my body.
But you should know that I’m sorry for being careless with you.
Lord knows I owed you more, than I’m pretty sure I ever could give anybody
But I can’t pin down what normal people want from foreign objects
Bottom-shelf erotic products like me

So, I could hold your hand but keep you at arms’ length
Oh, hang me from a branch too high to climb and shake
Less rare than scarce, less diamond than rough
Unlikely to be more than the coal you fail to crush

I swear I’m really trying.
Get it together, Will, know and do better
It just don’t come natural to me to think
That you’d want me for me
I swear I’m really trying
I’m sorry, I promise, I’m doing my best
I just haven’t learned how to be human as you are yet

I still don’t know who you are. I only know that I’m still lonely
That morbid sort where even company can’t cure me
And the more you reassure the less I trust
But still you gave me your heart, I only gave you my body.
Honestly thought nobody’d want it, let alone notice it’s
Gone and so I left it home but now
Now, now, now

I keep a locket with a picture of the back of my head
Oh, monkey-wrench my side view mirrors, ghost my friends
I’ve lived more lives than enough, I haven’t died quite as much
But I’m not a real person, just the shit you can’t make up

I swear I’m really trying
I’m just as exposed if I take off my clothes 
When we make the closest thing to love that I’m capable of
I don’t know why you would care. But I’m really trying
I’m sorry, I promise, I’m doing my best
I just haven’t learned how to be human as you are yet

Did I really 
Have any of that gravity? Maybe you’re quicksand
Because I really couldn’t tell how deep my footprints went
The vertex of my redemption arc, the searching of that virgin heart
I’m catatonic in your arms, cryin’ “how did I cause so much harm?”

I’m down pounding my head against the kitchen floor
Apologizing for my life and ever entering yours
Don’t say “I’m sorry but this can’t go on” I know you got scars of your own,
But hide my knives before you go, I’ll either live or die alone

I swear I will die trying
I’m still in the process but I’m making progress. 
I promise I honestly want to prove improvement’s possible
I swear I’m so fucking sorry
I’m not a good person, I’m barely a person at all, but 
Someday I’ll be perfect and I’ll make up for it all

Against the Kitchen Floor - Charlotte, NC

I want a new pair of shades, get paid to wear shoes
Do what I say, don't say what I do when we're alone now
High up but a low down
You know I'm not the type of guy to turn my back on a knife
And that's why I'm still looking in the mirror

I want to be safe from the fame but be loved from afar
Get paid to write my name, could you airbrush my scars?
Get my good side. Don't get on my bad side.
You know I'm not the type of guy to turn my back on a knife
It's just my luck these motherfuckers talking smack on a guy
But I'm deserving every word they could begin to apply
Well at least they know now

That I really don't care what you think or what you say
Either that or I do way too much, oh well, whatever, either way
My hearts empty and I'm trying to fill it up
But it's not big enough for the both of us
No it's not big enough for the both of us

I want no less than the best but the best I can do
Is do the worst thing first and leave the rest up to you
I'm realistic. Everyone's a critic.
If I keep beating myself up I'll keep on winning the fight and get my ass kicked
I'm poisonous not toxic
I'll admit when I'm wrong, but only to be right
And if it fits in the song, I'll rhyme that with "contrived"
Don't meet your idols. Hey fuck you, I'm your idol.
But the only label that'll sign is in the DSM-5, cause my flaws are sort of on the pathological side.
Don't call me eccentric, call me mentally sick, 'cause I ain't sold enough tickets yet to be rich, and that's the only difference

I really don't care what you think or what you say
Either that or I do way too much, oh well, whatever, either way
My hearts empty and I'm trying to fill it up
But it's not big enough for the both of us
No it's not big enough for the both of us

And if looks could kill, I'd be staring in the mirror
And if looks could kill, I'd be staring in the mirror
And if looks could kill, I'd be staring in the mirror
Even more than I already would
'Cause man I'm looking good 

And I really don't care what you think or what you say
Either that or I do way too much, oh well, whatever, either way
My hearts empty and I'm trying to fill it up
But it's not big enough for the both of us
And I really don't care what you think or what you say
I'm a cancer, I'm malignant, yeah you ought to stay away
My hearts fucking empty and I'm trying to fill it up
But it's not big enough for the both of us
No it's not big enough for the both of us
No it's not big enough for the both of us.

...And If I Did, You Deserved It. ("In case I make it," Outtake) - Knitting Factory, Spokane, WA

Independent experimental singer-songwriter and multimedia artist, currently fast asleep.

...And If I Did, You Deserved It. ("In case I make it," Outtake) - Knitting Factory, Spokane, WA

Will Wood