Bruce Cockburn - Birmingham Shadows Chords

Bruce Cockburn - Birmingham Shadows

This is my first attempt at this whole thing and I don't have it correct, but my 
hope is that someone will take this and fix it because I have been dying to know 
the correct way to play this fantastic song!  And if someone feels so inclined, 
please tab out the lead part, too!  I am 99% the verse is right, but the chorus 
chords are just an educated guess based on some jazz theory -wish I had stuck with music class...
The song is the work and creation of Bruce Cockburn on the album Charity of Night 
- easily his best song!
Happy, moody playing!

Capo second fret


Verse: Em7 (he has some interesting walk-up that I haven't figured out...maybe you 
could? - listen for rhythm 

Birmingham
Just behind the mountain
Sparse streelamps glow in hot half-moon haze
Shadows shorten into little black pools that elongate behind
We walk, talk some, laugh some
Worked hard, now wired, and hanging out
I'm curious what you might be all about
Curious, too, what that dark-shape in the hard shining cruiser might do
And you have no idea what you're getting 
out of of your own curiosity and tense energy
Tattoo on chest like the key to the puzzle of your pumping heart
Wearing your shadows all over your sleeve
Wearing the role of young upstart


Chorus: G    A7Sus4/E      Cadd9          A7Sus4/E            (These are close but not right)

Birmingham shadows fall
You show a little, I let something show too
It's now or not at all
Out on the road, it's always instant get-to-know-you


Verse 2: Em7

Under velvet trees, towering like the sides of a well
Before the empty two office blocks
Which we're admonished not to enter
Policeman studies us, finds us confusing
More amusing than threat
Moves on, bemused
Pavement spirals down ahead like the fossil of a giant shell
Along the kingdom's midnight marches
I wear my shadows where they're harder to see
But they follow me everywhere
I guess that should tell me that I'm travelling toward light
I guess something you sang made me remember that
I guess I'm saying thanks for that
[Chorus]

[Instrumental Break]


Verse 3: Em7

Got a head full of horrors and a heart full of night
At home in the darkness, but hungry for dawn
I only remember scenes, never the stories I live
The good things about that is, it's easy to forgive
Can't make assumptions about any of this
We're nomads following our own songlines
Who knows what could strike before we meet again?
But if I fall down and die
Without saying goodbye
I give you this: you'll have lost a friend


[Chorus]

Verse (1st 4 lines only) slowed down:

Birmingham
Just behind the mountain
Sparse streelamps glow in hot half-moon haze
Shadows shorten into little black pools that elongate behind...

the fade out...