"Desperados Waiting For A Train" - Guy Clark

[enigmatic]

A moving song from a master songwriter..



I played the Red River Valley
He'd sit in the kitchen and cry
Run his fingers through seventy years of livin'
And wonder, "Lord, why has every well I've drilled gone dry?"

We were friends, me and this old man
We's like desperados waitin' for a train
Desperados waitin' for a train

He's a drifter, a driller of oil wells
He's an old school man of the world
He taught me how to drive his car when he was too drunk to
And he'd wink and give me money for the girls
And our lives was like, some old Western movie
Like desperados waitin' for a train
Like desperados waitin' for a train

From the time that I could walk he'd take me with him
To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe
There was old men with beer guts and dominos
Lying 'bout their lives while they played
I was just a kid, they all called me "Sidekick"
Just like desperados waitin' for a train
Like desperados waitin' for a train

One day I looked up and he's pushin' eighty
He's got brown tobacco stains all down his chin
Well to me he was a hero of this country
So why's he all dressed up like them old men
Drinkin' beer and playin' Moon and Forty-two
Jus' like desperados waitin' for a train
Like a desperado waitin' for a train

The day 'fore he died I went to see him
I was grown and he was almost gone.
So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen
And sang one more verse to that old song
...Come on, Jack, that son-of-a-bitch is comin'...

Like desperados waitin' for a train
Like desperados waitin' for a train....

[mike_c]

1. great song-- Guy Clark is one of my favorite musicians!

eom

[enigmatic]

3. He's unbelievable

I really wish I would had the chance to see Guy when he toured with Townes Van Zandt before Townes died..

[mike_c]

6. do you have the Live at the Bluebird Cafe CD?

If not, I highly recommend it-- Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and Steve Earle.

[enigmatic]

7. Yeah!!

Townes is wasted on it, but it gives his songs an even more touching quality to them in my mind. I was played "If I Needed You" on my acoustic earlier this evening; that's the first song of his I ever learned how to play..

[JohnnyBoots]

2. I was raised on:

Bruce, JT, Jerry Jeff,Waylon Willie and the boys, buffett, and the Stones.....Who'd of thunk Kris K. was a Rhodes Scholar....

[enigmatic]

4. All great songwriters

And the 69-74 Mick Jones version of The Stones was the best, IMO..

[JohnnyBoots]

5. Moved to Pittsburgh SNl ended a bunch of ass hat Mf'ers

on the TV, lucky I found my wife on thunder road, onlyt 26 and used to be in the huht so bad.....Glad she talked some sense into me! I am one /dem who still loves Tobey Kieth.