Guy Clark Desperadoes Waiting For A Train Lyrics

Desperadoes Waiting For A Train Lyrics

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"
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

(spoken) Come on, Jack, that son-of-a-bitch is
comin'
(you can hear "son-of-a-gun" in Willy Nelson's version
:])

We're desperados waitin' for a train
Was like desperados waitin'
for a train. (x4)