Desperados Waiting For A Train

Desperados Waitin' For a Train Guy Clark

I played the Red River Valley

He'd sit in the kitchen and cry

Run his fingers through seventy years of livin'

"I wonder, Lord, has every well I've drilled gone dry?"

We were friends, me and this old man

Like two desperados waitin' for a train

Two desperados waitin' for a train

He was a drifter, a driller of oil wells

A teacher, a schoolman of the world

Taught me how to drive his car when he was too drunk to

He'd wink and give me money for the girls

And our lives were like, well, some old Western movie

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Yeah, from the time that I could walk he'd take me with him

To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe

Where old men with beer guts and dominoes

Would lie about their lives while they played

And I was just a kid, they all called me "Sidekick"

Just like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Well, one day I looked up and he's pushin' eighty

Brown tobacco stains all down his chin

To me he was a hero of this country

So what's he doin' all dressed up like them old men

Just drinkin' beer and playin' Moon and Forty-two

We were desperados waitin' for a train

Desperados waitin' for a train

The day before he died I went to see him

I was grown, he, almost gone.

But we closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen

And sang one more verse to that old song

(spoken) Come on, Jack, that son-of-a-bitch is comin'

Desperados waitin' for a train

Desperados waitin' for a train.