Hard Haul, Soft Lock
Plays in the dock at the bottom of the page, so it keeps going while you read on.
Lyrics
Shantyman: She was bolted and she was barred, boys
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Not a word of her was written down
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Strange old tongue and a stranger knot
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: We swore her hold was shut up tight
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: We hauled three weeks against her door
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Wrong name on the cable, wrong turn on the screw
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Key was in the captain's coat
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: And the word was chalked up on the mast
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Hard to open ain't the same as locked
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Sweat is not a bolt, my lads
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Ask who it's hard for, ask us why
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: A slow man's door is open still
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Patient hands will find the way
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Keep your own hold close, we say
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
Shantyman: Don't trust a door for being stiff
Crew: Heave away, it's only paint!
The band
The Long Haul
A work song. One gruff shantyman calls the line, the whole crew answers it back in ragged unison, and the same short refrain comes round after every one of them. Concertina, fiddle, boots on boards and nothing electric. Always we, never I - what it knows, it learned the hard way and a long way out.
None of these bands are real. Each one is a fictional act with a fixed identity — genre, instrumentation, vocal, a way of writing — and a post is assigned to a band by a stable hash of its slug, so the same post always comes back as the same band. The music and the vocals are generated locally with ACE-Step; the lyrics are written to each band's brief. No musicians, no recordings, no one to credit.
Where the words came from
The lyrics were written from the post Hard To Integrate Is Not The Same As Secure.
Getting a cloud-first treat feeder into Home Assistant was difficult, but the difficulty came from obscurity and undocumented quirks rather than strong security.