Fred Eaglesmith's “Time to Get a Gun” & The Beat Farmers' “Gun Sale at the Church”

Two great songs about our self-destructive American love of firearms, and how antithetical it is to a productive society.

This Eaglesmith tune has been one of my favorites for a long-time, but it hits a little different these days. The Beat Farmers song is not quite as accomplished as the Eaglesmith song, but the idea is so priceless and of the moment, it felt better to mash them together than to choose just one.

Fred Eaglesmith's "Time To Get a Gun"

We’ll start with the Eaglesmith with begins like an engine starting on a cold morning. The instrumentation sounds particularly rustic and unsteady, and the timing of the hits, suggests common rabble sitting down at a Guitar Center, only they’re picking instruments out of a friend's garage-attic.

"There’s a banjo. Hand me that! Hit that snare once, will you? Okay, that’s enough. Bill, would you have me that cowbell? Dork, you dropped it...."

It begins with crime striking close to home. The neighbor’s car, stolen right out of his driveway. Dogs were barking, but they didn’t heed the warning.

There’s a sense that their complaisance was repaid in theft and now they must get a little biblical.

It’s presented in this matter-of-fact way such that this is what one does to address this kind of a situation, but the way he sings, and approaches it, seems to hint he’s got reservations.

His wife’s gonna start locking the door, which is one of those things it feels like you almost had to live in a town of under 10K to have experienced anymore, if even then. Our sense of our neighbords and our foes has really fallen prey to the over-class’ need to incite fear.

It’s great that it’s also posed as a personal sacrifice. His fear is going to cost him the beer he enjoys. But as he says, “time to put something between me and the sun.” He’s got to puff himself up big, because fear has undermined his place in this world.

The chorus ends with the sad, twisted logic that has prevented man from rising to a better place in the world – “when the talking is over / it’s time to get a gun.”

It brings me no joy how the next verse is about taxes and a gubmint man. I can’t hear someone drag out that Reagan-era agitprop without flashing on Kurtz, “exterminate the brutes.” Hell, they’ll do it themselves. Just hang out at the end of Maple Street, manipulating their fear from above.

Well, it turns out now he has a good reason to get a gun. The state is putting up a highway thru his land. In this way it’s almost a warped Woody Guthrie song, where the singer seems to be singing about freedom but all he’s selling is a different kind of tyranny.

I think it should be up to me / cause when it’s all said and done
Somebody’s got to walk into the night / I’m gonna be that one

Yep, because American history for better and mostly worse is about meatheads, defying reason and doing what was in their heart, only it was planted and incepted by people without anyone’s interests at heart but their own, and these simple folks were hoodwinked into making war on those that would help them – inasmuch as they’re about helping all of us.

In this way, the song is kind of a referendum on the stupidity of easily manipulated people and well-planted the emotional triggers that hold the rest of us hostage. It’s sad and it makes me angry at the same time.

Why does he get to be that one?

The Beat Farmers' "Gun Sale at a Church"

This song is a bit like Wiley Coyote vs. Acme Incorporated, A Legal Brief, the short story that led to the movie. The idea is simply so good, you don't even have to sketch it out. It's instantly appreciable. Similarly, the perfectly coordinated disconnect of a gun sale at a church is at once absurd and perfectly relatable.

You barely have to go beyond the chorus!!

It's also kind of a favorite inasmuch as it's a Buddy Blue song, and he was the first member of Beat Farmers to get his songs squeezed out by the suits. He had more of a rockabilly / Billy Haley kind of vibe, and losing him really seemed to cost the band something, though by then their attempt to curry the suits' favor was nothing but a disaster. Naturally there's a bit of a Presley-twang to how Blue sings it, that seems to work well, much like the raggedy instrumentation of Eaglesmith's track, conjuring the right mix of connections.

Anyhoo. The song is presented a kind of get-away. We're gonna pack the kids and go to a fun day at the church where dad is going to buy a human-killing-machine. "Don't ask why daddies need that until you're a daddy, and you have a daughter of your own."

So they're heading out to this fun time outside the city, where it's safe, and where. you know, they have gun sales at church. Naturally Blue invokes the right-wing talking point about crime, which only seems to go down without impacting the level of rhetoric. Now why would that be?

Give Blue credit, he leads you right up to the edge of the absurdity.

So the family's all ready to pray at the holy perch
That's set up in the middle of the gun sale at the church

To his further credit, Blue connects it to crass pointless materialism as well, a status symbol that endangers everyone in range.

Well we'll ask the lord to forgive us all of our sins
And we'll look at the latest in gold plated firing pins

Blue, who is clearly familiar with the history credits the proper conspirators: "Well my two main men are Jesus and old John Birch, So we're going on down to the gun sale at the church."

One of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous lines was that it takes true genius to hold two opposing thoughts in your mind and not go crazy. But apparently if you're crazy enough, you don't even know they're opposing thoughts. (Blue would later become a San Diego journalist and music critic.)

Imagine that.