Uptown, Down to Earth (Buckhead Arts Festival)

Lyrics

Friday night, Peachtree sleeps under the orange lamps.
Just glass and steel, holding their breath.
Then the trucks roll in, quiet as a tide.
And the white canvas tents bloom in the dark.

Saturday morning, the sun hits the awnings.
Smell of fresh sawdust and roasted corn.
A potter from Athens, hands still caked in red clay.
A welder from Macon with dragons of steel.
The towers of IHG and Coke look down,
like they don't know what to make of this.
This handmade town that just appeared.

This is the weekend Peachtree forgets its name.
When the silk from the condos meets the denim from the flats.
Uptown, down to earth, just for a day or two.
Buying a photograph, sharing a beer.
Yeah, the real deals happen right here on the asphalt.
Not up there in the air.

There's a girl with a guitar by the fountain,
singing about the river, not the rent.
A guy in a suit, tie loosened,
is holding a crooked, blue-glazed mug.
He's talking to the woman who made it.
Asking about the firing, the heat.
And for a minute, he isn't a vice president.
He's just a man holding something real.

This is the weekend Peachtree forgets its name.
When the silk from the condos meets the denim from the flats.
Uptown, down to earth, just for a day or two.
Buying a photograph, sharing a beer.
Yeah, the real deals happen right here on the asphalt.
Not up there in the air.

Sunday, five o'clock. The light gets long and gold.
The painters start wrapping their canvases in plastic.
A final handshake, a folded twenty.
The last funnel cake gets sold.
And you can feel the city starting to remember itself.
The hum of the traffic waiting just a block away.
The glass towers polishing themselves in the sunset.

They fold the tents like prayers.
Sweep the glitter from the curb.
By morning, it's just a street again.
Just another Monday on Peachtree Road.
But something's left behind.
A little bit of paint on the pavement.
A little bit of soul in the air.
Yeah. 'Til next year.