Cold was the night and hard was the ground
They found her in a small grove of trees
And lonesome was the place where Georgia was found
She’s too young to be out on the street
Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?
Ida said she couldn’t keep Georgia from dropping out of school
I was doing the best that I could
Oh, but she just kept running away from this world
These children are so hard to raise good
Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?
Close your eyes and count to ten
I will go and hide but then
Be sure to find me, I want you to find me
And we’ll play all over
We’ll play all over
We’ll play all over again
There’s a toad in the witch grass, there’s a crow in the corn
Wild flowers on a cross by the road
And somewhere a baby is crying for her mom
As the hills turn from green back to gold
Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?
Why wasn’t God watching?
Why wasn’t God listening?
Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?
Words and music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
©1999 Jalma Music (ASCAP)
Produced by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
Recorded and mixed by Oz Fritz and Jacquire King
2nd engineer: Jeff Sloan
Recorded at Prairie Sun Recording Studios, Cotati, CA
Tom Waits: Vocals and piano
Dalton Dillingham III: Bass
Linda Delucia-Gbidossi: Violin
Track 13 on the album ‘Mule Variations’ 1999
Time: 4.22
An article in the Press Democrat:
With a down-to-earth unassuming presence Waits has made his mark on the county, but the county is also leaving its imprint on him. Just as the drunks, whores and midgets of Sunset Boulevard and Hell’s Kitchen littered his songs for decades, now the rural flotsam and jetsam of Sonoma County has filtered into his soundscape.
The most obvious example is his new track "Georgia Lee", a simple heartfelt piano tribute to Georgia Moses, the 12-year-old girl whose body was found off of Highway 101 in Petaluma in the summer of 1997.
Slipping unnoticed into the back pew of a Santa Rosa church, Waits was there when family members and the community gathered to remember Georgia. As if amplifying his thoughts at the time, the song’s bellowing refrain poses: "Why wasn’t God watching? Why wasn’t God listening? Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?"
"I guess everybody was wondering, where were the police, where was the deacon, where were the social workers and where was I and where were you," Waits said in an Epitaph Records press release. "Now that she’s gone, one thing that’s come out of it is that her neighbor has opened her home as a place where teen-age girls can come ... A lot of kids are raising their parents.
"You usually run away because you want someone to come get you, but the water is full of sharks."
Production coordinator Jeff Sloan was in the studio when Waits and his wife and co-writer Kathleen Brennan were re-reading newspaper clippings before recording the song. "They felt like it was a tragedy how there were a lot of kids just like Georgia Lee who you never really hear about," said Sloan. "It was kind of their way of saying we didn’t forget, and maybe we should all be more in touch with our kids."
Waits has lived in much tougher places, but Georgia Lee’s death probably also struck a nerve considering he relocated to Sonoma County looking for a safe haven to settle down. "He and his wife spent years scouting California for a place to raise a family," said Prairie Sun recording studio owner Mark "Mooka" Rennick. "And they ended up here in Sonoma County because he got the isolation that he needed and the realness that he was looking for."