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38 The Denunciation of Ricky Skaggs from On High No more light strumming of your mandolin and the whispered tone and the saphappy featherweight songs in my honor. Ricky, no more treacly bullshit. I actually rose up from the dead. Do you understand what that means exactly? A god. A mothertrucking god is who you are singing to. Did Zeus get tickled with a zither and prance on his tippy-toes like a poodle someone shaved? No. Did my Father get weepy little valentines and thank-you notes for nothing but pain and suffering for a thousand years? He got hollering and screams and fists raised at the sky. He got rockabilly eventually and heavy metal and thrash. Listen to Bill Monroe. He won’t just kiss my ass. Ricky you have suffered in your life enough to know better than to sing that stuff. It pains me to hear it. Stick to what hurts most and mean it. Cut open something valuable and bleed it. Hang it upside down in your yard and let it drain into the grass. My god Ricky I might have to come down there and show you what I mean. Don’t make me. I have eyes like laser beams 39 and a voice like Ralph Stanley but deeper down darker. No more sweetness Ricky. You are not a bee. There is a broken-down burning house inside the soul and someone in the window waves. It is me. Dammit Ricky, do something. Sing something true the way you used to. Heaven is not a given. Make a ladder of what actually happens to matter to you—blood, strings and the ear. ...

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