Desperados Waiting For A Train

Words & Music:

Guy Clark

 

There is an arrangement of this in the April 2007 issue of Acoustic Guitar.

 

D                                      A                      Bm

I played the Red River Valley and he'd sit in the kitchen and cry.

        G  F#m          Em      D          Bm

Run his fingers through seventy years of livin'

       G           F#m       Em                 Asus4  A

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

A                            D

We were friends, me and this old man.

          Bm                           G

We's like desperados waitin' for a train.

Bm                       G   F#m  Em  Asus4  A

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

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

G     Bm                       G

We're desperados waitin' for a train

         Bm                       G

Was like desperados waitin' for a train