Cactus Tree

CACTUS TREE by Joni Mitchell This is taken from a BBC video recording of a 1970 live performance so it may differ slightly from the album version. Joni never sings a song quite the same way twice. Capo IV all chords listed relative to capo Chords: D [OOOOOO] Asus4/D [O4O3OX] Gadd9/D [O2O1OO] D/A [XO43O4] A7(no 3) [XO21O2] [Intro:] [Asus4/ Gadd9/ Asus4/ Gadd9/] [Asus4/D Gadd9/D] There’s a man who’s been out sailing in a decade full of dreams And he takes her to his schooner and he treats her like a queen Bearing beads from California with their amber stones and green He has called her from the harbor he has kissed her with his freedom He has heard her off to starboard in the breaking and the breathing Of the water weeds and she’s so busy being free There’s a man who’s climbed a mountain and he’s calling out her name And he hopes her heart can hear three thousand miles he calls again He can think her there beside him he can miss her just the same He has missed her in the forest while he showed her all the flowers And the branches sang the chorus as he climbed the scaley towers Of a forest tree while she was somewhere being free There’s a man who’s sent a letter and he’s waiting for reply He has asked her of her travels since the day they said goodbye He writes wish you were beside me we can make it if we try He has seen her at the office with her name on all his papers Through the sharing of the profits he will find it hard to shake her From his memory and she’s so busy being free There’s a lady in the city and she thinks she loves them all There’s the one who’s thinking of her there’s the one who sometimes calls There’s the one who writes her letters with his facts and figures scrawl She has brought them to her senses they have laughed inside her laughter Now she rallies her defenses for she fears that one will ask her For eternity and she’s so busy being free There’s a man who sends her medals he is bleeding from the war There’s a drummer and a dreamer and you know there may be more She will love them when she sees them they will lose her if they follow And she only means to please them and her heart is full and hollow Like a cactus tree while she’s so busy being free Notes: > The right hand is Travis-style fingerpicking. I haven’t quite exactly nailed it down yet but a basic three-finger picking pattern seems to work just fine. > Sometimes (including the intro at the beginning) Joni starts with the Gadd9 fingering and slides up to the Asus4 rather than playing the Asus4 flat out. Likewise she sometimes slides down from the Asus4 to the Gadd9 or hammers on to the Gadd9 from an open D chord.               Enjoy acoustic classic rock junkies! Let me know what you think!