Harpgirl,

Well, my computer shut down for a few days, so I plead forgiveness in not posting these songs sooner.


LET HIM ROLL
by Guy Clark

He was a wino tried and true.
Done about everything there is to do,
He worked on freighters and he worked in bars,
He worked on farms and he worked on cars.

Well it was white port that put that look in his eye,
That grown men get when they need to cry,
We sat down on the curb to rest,
And his head just fell down on his chest.

He said, "Every single day it gets,
Just a little bit harder to handle and yet."
Then he lost the thread and his mind got cluttered,
And the words just rolled off down the gutter.

He was an elevator man in a cheap hotel,
In exchange for the rent on a one room cell.
And he was old in years beyond his time,
No thanks to the world and the white port wine.

He said, "Son." He always called me son,
Life for you has just begun.
" And he told me the story that I'd heard before,
How he fell in love with a Dallas whore.

He could cut through the years to the very night,
It all ended in a whore house fight.
And she turned his last proposal down,
In favor of being a girl about town.

It's been seventeen years right in line,
And he ain't been straight none of the time.
It's too many days of fightin' the weather,
And too many nights of not being together.
So he died.

When they went through his personal effects,
In among the stubs from the welfare checks,
Was a crumbling picture of a girl in a door,
And an address in Dallas and nothing more.

The welfare people provided the priest,
And the couple from the mission down the street,
Sang "Amazing Grace" and no one cried,
'Cept some woman in back, way off to the side.

We all left and she was standing there,
Black veil covering her silver hair,
And old one-eyed John said her name was Alice,
She use to be a whore in Dallas.

Oh let him roar, oh let him roll,
I bet he's gone to Dallas rest his soul.
Oh let him roll, oh let him roar,
He always said that heaven was just a Dallas whore.


THE RANDALL KNIFE
by Guy Clark

My father had a Randall knife.
My mother gave it to him,
When he went off to World War II,
To save us all from ruin.
If you've ever held a Randall knife,
Then you know my father well.
If a better blade was ever made,
I was probably forged in hell.

My father was a good man,
A lawyer by his trade,
And only once did I ever see,
Him misuse the blade.
It almost cut his thumb off,
When he took it for a tool.
The knife was made for darker things,
And you could not bend the rules.

He let me take it camping once,
On a Boy Scout jamboree,
And I broke a half an inch off,
Trying to stick it in a tree.
I hid it from him for a while,
But the knife and he were one,
He put it in his bottom drawer,
Without a hard word one.

There it slept and there it stayed,
For twenty some odd years,
Sort of like Excalibur,
Except waiting for a tear.

My father died when I was forty,
And I couldn't find a way to cry,
Not because I didn't love him,
Not because he didn't try.
I'd cried for every lesser thing,
Whiskey,
pain and beauty,
But he deserved a better tear,
And I was not quite ready.

So we took his ashes out to sea,
And poured 'em off the stern,
And threw the roses in the wake,
Of everything we'd learned.
When we got back to the house,
They asked me what I wanted.
Not the law books not the watch,
I need the things he's haunted.

My hand burned for the Randall knife,
There in the bottom drawer,
And I found a tear for my father's life,
And all that it stood for.


Enjoy the music!

Roger in Baltimore