How Can I Call This Home? [2023 Broadway Cast Recording]

I go to bed at night
Hoping when I wake
This will all be gone
Like it was just a dream
And I'll be home again
Back again in Brooklyn
Back with people who look like I do
And talk like I do
And think like I do
But then
The sun rises in Atlanta again

These people make me tense
I live in fear they'll start a conversation
These people make no sense
They talk and I just stare and shut my mouth
It's like a foreign land
I didn't understand
That being southern's not just
Being in the South
When I look out on all this
How can I call this home? (La-la-la in the land o' cotton)

These men belong in zoos
It's like they never joined civilization
The Jews are not like Jews
I thought that Jews were Jews
But I was wrong

I thought I would be fine
But four years down the line
With every word it's very clear
I don't belong
I don't cuss, I don't drawl
So how can I call this home?

Home calls and I'm free of
The southern breeze
Free of magnolia trees
And endless sunshine!

(Ever more lives the dream of Atlanta) ever more lives the dream of Atlanta
But not mine! Of Atlanta
Not mine (we stand together)

A yankee with a college education
Who by his own design In the great state of Georgia!
Is trapped inside the land
That time forgot! (Strong and proud)
I'm trapped inside this life
And trapped beside a wife
Who would prefer I'd say "Howdy!", not "Shalom!"

Well, I'm sorry, Lucille (God bless the sight)
But I feel what I feel (of the old hills of Georgia) (ever more lives the dream of Atlanta)
And this place is surreal (the old red hills of) (ever more Her eternal)
So how can I call this home? (Old red hills of home! Old red hills of home!)