#blue rawhide

[linewalksyou]

throw me a bone, feed me a line. pour a hard drink for harder times. i'm the king of the gutters, the prince of the dogs. one or the other, a ship lost in the fog.

[linewalksyou]

it was a thunder’n and thunder’n and lightnin’, you know the day this poor boy was born. i ain’t never known nothin’ but your trouble, your trouble and your hate and scorn. you know my daddy, lord, he died in a train wreck. yeah, my momma, she was born to lose.

       you know my middle name is natural born trouble,                  yeah, and my last name is the blues,                            oh yeah, my last name it is the blues...

i see the cold light a-comin’ from the window of your warm forty-thousand dollar home. oh yeah, but i don’t need you people because the blues they was meant to roam. 

          well now hunger is my companion,                         cold and pain they know my cry.       oh yeah you people, you can pray for salvation,                               but the blues don't never die, no no.                 yeah, the blues don’t never die.

[linewalksyou]

rodeo’s musical mood ring: a guide

Residents of Red Ridge who find themselves in Rodeo’s orbit likely know at least one thing about him: the man just can’t keep an earworm to himself. If you’ve spent more than a moment in his company, then you’ve likely heard him belt out his favorite tunes in his big blue rawhide croon. Sometimes he’s just strolling on through his day, singing some random snippet from a ditty that’s caught his fancy, but there are a few tried-and-trues in his repertoire that seem to come up again and again. These are songs that have settled in his soul, songs that twang in the same tenor as his state of mind. In time, a pattern emerges. Sure as the wag of a dog’s tail, the songs Rodeo sings can tell you what mood he’s in.

When he’s bone tired, run down, at the bottom of a rough day with only a lonely night to look forward to, he’ll be slurping whiskey and singing Whipping Post.  Nothing seems to change, bad times stay the same, and I can’t run...

If he’s restless and rowdy and ready to loose his trouble upon the world, you bet he’ll be howlin’ Axton. And if you ain’t lookin’ for a fight, better steer clear once you hear you know my middle name is Natural Born Trouble, yeah, and my last name is the blues...

When he’s whiskey-warm and lookin’ for a good time woman for the night, he’ll be grinnin’ sly and singin’, give me my cycle and the star-filled sky above, and a good-lookin’ woman with a heart full of love. I’ll go to any honkey tonk in any old town, ‘cause I am the wild one, I’ll never settle down.

In the calm before the storm, the quiet moments before a risky gig goes down, you’ll hear the low down killing floor blues as he sings, I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving. Blues falling down like hail. And the day keeps worryin’ me, there’s a HELLHOUND on my trail, hellhound on my trail...

If he’s thinking about his brothers in arms, his pack, his best friends since small times who always had his back, then he’s singing a chant that he and his Hellhounds used to bark out loud in bars, up at the moon in the woods behind the trailer park, on the backs of their bikes as they tore down the road together -- HO, boys, is you right? I done got right! What I hate about linin’ track is that’a these ol’ boys about to break my back! HO, boys, can ya line ‘em on the track? HO, boys, can ya line ‘em!

Each morning in the early bright, when the sun is yellow through the windows of his quiet trailer, he sits at his table with a bullet press and makes a round of hollow-points to load his Colt 1911 CROW JANE with. As he drinks his coffee he cleans his gun, fills her magazine, racks the slide to chamber a bullet and then adds one more. While he does this he sings to her, Crow Jane, Crow Jane, don’t you hold your head too high. Someday, baby, you know you got to die...

But his favorite song to sing, and one that ain’t heard too often lately, is his victory song-- the one that comes after a high stakes win, when his cunning has overruled his temper and he’s riding high, glowing, triumphant. Then, in his powerhouse voice, he belts out THE HIGHWAYMAN, to let the world know he has won.

[linewalksyou]

my well is dry, my words hollow. promises brittle as my bones. you'll get nothing from me, you're squeezing water from a stone and i am fool enough to go this alone...

ain't you supposed to bend? ain't you supposed to flex like a willow in the wind? ain't it easier to bend? i am the one who stayed behind. my will is iron, i know. and i haven't learned a thing from the trouble it's got me in and my troubles are just starting to begin...