1. |
Daisy
04:48
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Daisy
Daisy was a survivor
I met her in a small town shooting pool
I bummed a smoke under the risers
While the rain came down and cooled...
the August afternoon in Texas
Where it was Lone Star and I against the heat
The girl I was dating had already left us
And I wasn’t due back at work ‘til three
The bar around the block served free chicken
On Friday afternoons around lunch
Daisy worked a fry cook in the corner
As I doubled up my bourbon on a hunch
##
Daisy said her babies had some babies
Who were working on some babies of their own
“Don’t try and do that math,” she laughed.
“Just know that I don’t go to sleep alone.”
She asked me where I’s from as we smoked
I said, “The good, ol’ U.S. of A.”
She asked me how I was liking Texas.
“Touche, mon amore.”
##
Daisy’s first husband Lionel
Was a drunken, swollen thumb of a man
She’d liked his uniform when she met him
But it was the badge that she came to understand
Because who could she call when he beat her?
Her eyes were black but he was backed by the blue
“Thank God for that heart attack,” she laughed.
“Sometimes you get what’s due to you.”
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2. |
Incorrigible Boy
04:28
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Incorrigible Boy
We were supposed to go and see Cooper
Play in Charleston last night
But here I am in Georgia, all alone
You’re still in the car
Heading up North
But now you’re on that long road back home
My mother said, “Never date no one from Jersey--
“She’ll just break your heart.
“Thought you’d have learned your lesson the last time
And never date no 21-year old
Girl that looks like her
--She’s got no idea that her life’s about to start
If tomorrow never comes
I’d stay drunk out in the streets
Out there I don’t think too much on you
But alone this guitar
Is a soundtrack for the times
Your heart flittered like a dove inside of my hands
##
No one to talk to
It’s another long, lonely weekend
And I’ve just been drinking so goddamned much
While sitting here with my guitar
That I watched you play
Naked as the days we were born…
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3. |
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Hurricane Brewing over the Gulf Blues
There’s a hurricane brewing out over the gulf
Again I’m wondering why I live out on the coast
I’m allergic to the sun and drunk from the rain
And when the barometer drops all my joints do ache
Maybe it’s because back in my younger days
My sister and I’d ‘cross town to the pier and skate
One time she brought her tiny fishing rod
I helped her catch a shark and she laughed and danced around
##
I met my first wife on a my friend’s boat
We’d each just broke up with someone else
I offered her a beer, she accepted it and smiled
Said, “Thanks I needed that--no one’s been sweet to me in a while”
I said, “Lady your standards have got to improve.”
And we got to know each other over the next three years
In a home we built in the California dunes
Far out on love on a hippy drug commune
But she dried-up in the desert from cancer in the sun
And left me whiskey wet for twenty-seven months
I’d resigned to lose myself that way
But my little sister came, brought me back to the beach to stay
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4. |
Country Kid Blues
02:50
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Country Kid Blues
After I’d rake the leaves I’d finished my chores
I’d bike my way down to the country store
Way out there on the county line
Fence-post markings kept track of my time
At 9 I already had a few cares in the world
My weekly comic books and the girl down the road
My momma’s sick health, and my daddy’s tears weren’t tough
And the redneck boys in town scared me a little too much
I remember muddy water and the sharpness of the rocks
When the creeks got swollen in the early spring months
I’d go out and play on the banks with my rod
Wanting for trout but catfish is all I caught
Momma skinned ‘em good like the men in town
When some clown at the diner’d try to tarnish her crown
She earned it hauling my daddy’s baggage to the curb
And she kept us fed when some weeks he couldn’t leave his bed
##
But depression you know is a hell of a thing
I learned that growing up from a man who always drank
His eyes radiated sadness and his beard grew long
But he’d always listen when momma sang his favorite song
She sit down at the piano after a long night’s work
And play while I ate breakfast before I’d go to school
On those long bus rides with miles between kids
I’d hum the melodies to myself and knew that daddy was no fool
At 10 I already had a few cares in the world
My weekly comic books and the girl down the road
My momma lost her health, and my daddy’s tears grew tough
And the redneck boys in town didn’t scare me anymore
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5. |
Hello, Damnation
03:15
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Hello, Damnation
Hello, Damnation
You’d got the best of me
But now I’m on the road
And from everything I’ve seen…
When I’m home again
You won’t be liking me
--the man I never was
Stoned like the child I have been…
Hello, Feelings
That I never sought
But I will admit
I had missed you for a while
When you’re gone I’m comfortable
And it looks much the same
As me sick in bed
--I’m fucking staring at a wall
But those are blank days
Yeah, they don’t come around too much
Just like her shadow
In my upstairs hall…
Goodbye, Rations
I have used you up
Chewed-through and mainlined
Into my headroom
And if we both wake up
I’ve got something to tell
You about the thing
We did the night before
Goodbye, Damnation
You had the best of me
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6. |
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Bigfoot (He’s a Friend of my In-laws)
Bigfoot is a friend of my in-laws
They have him over for whiskey and tea
He likes bourbon the best and politely requests
You keep your sugar water in Tennessee
He built a nest on their couch for a whole month
While fleeing his second divorce
She’d left with the cubs, the dog and the drugs,
Tom said, “I think it’s time you get clean.”
Tom never took much to me
But his wife Linda loves me like a son
Her daughter’s a vision--a bright, bold incision
of light in the dark of my life
##
Linda found a friend in Bigfoot
He’d cook her dinners when Tom was away
And though there’s been no admissions, there were many’s suspicions
Of why Linda’s newborn looked that way
All covered in fur, the young baby
Yawned and stifled a cry
My wife’s new half-sister, was already a darling critter
And Tom loved her the same anyway
##
My wife grew up knowing his younger sister--
They never mention her on the shows--
Because she died quite young from cancer in her bones
My wife’s head was shaved at her funeral
The hairless young thing in the box
--my wife knew that it was not her friend
And it was the first time she’d cried over someone who’d died
Since her father when she was ten
“Tom did the best that he could,” she says,
When pressed about her childhood
“He told cornball jokes, he was a decent step-dad,
“And I’m glad for all the times we have left.”
##
We got the news this morning
He slept in forever last night
He went gentle--no rage, then no light
So tomorrow we’ll throw him a beautiful goodbye
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7. |
In the Wings
02:58
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In the Wings
I was standing in the wings
Awaiting your direction
My part was done but I was calm
I had lost my nerve
Above the shattered lights on stage
I could sense you barely breathing
And I wondered who it was
Who now claimed your side
You were my first love
And I had waited for some time.
##
Acting right across from you
Was sometimes always daunting
It depended on how you woke
And what I’d done the night before
But your chest was the home where I’d go to peddle
These rambling bones
And when they was played just right
You’d often come to cry:
“Well, this love’s got melody no
Yeah, but it’s in the wrong key…”
##
That performance was the biggest thing
Back in my young life
And every night I watched you try
Under those false city lights
I wanted to protect you
And longed for nothing more
But you were so strong behind the scenes
That I couldn’t offer much
So I took you to that bar
Where everyone was acting better than me.
##
Then I was tumbling off the stage
Thinking I had blown it
I sat up and caught you leave
And I knew that I had
I shouted out your name,
Proposed my hand in marriage
But you were gone and the crowd all laughed
Thinking this was planned…
That house came down
But the reviews were mixed.
##
As I left that world’s stage
I swore you off once more,
Changed in the dark
And found that exit sign
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8. |
The Wolves
03:26
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9. |
End of Your Life
05:43
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End of Your Life
What is it you recall at the end of your life
--all those Saturdays spent working overtime,
Or maybe your wife’s hair bobbing gold, under blue light
As the band plays ‘Yellow Rose’ on your wedding night?
Well, green was the color
Of your Momma’s hungry eyes
Even after Daddy’d cuff em
And cause em both to shine
One for each of his warnings
Though he’d always move that line
Then take you out to dinner
And in his stumbling way apologize
But hamburgers and ice cream tasted fucking cheap
From the wallet of a man you wished your mom could beat
Halfway to death and leave you with the rest…
You’d started the hole once, on your 11th birthday
##
Maybe you’ll smell the creek where Virginia tore her Sunday best
After she said she loved you slightly more than all the rest
Of the boys who picked on you but never once caressed
The inside of her thighs as when your hands snaked up her dress
You thought you’d rest your heart in the darkness of a park
One moonless evening in your first beat-up old car
She whispered in your ear when she felt the time come near
In the morning you left for college and you felt your head grow clear
##
You loved a city in your twenties
Lost the country in your thirties
One had stained your soul
The other left your hands and knees all dirty
There was no children in your lap
As you drank to the past
Then one little towhead
Came and changed all that
You named her for your Mom
--Raised the weak over the strong
And she never met your Daddy,
Only heard of him in song
The one you wrote for her just before she finished school
And stepped out in the world feeling somewhat new
##
Your days beset by fog
You’re like a hound trapped in a log
You’re senses work but your body’s twerked
So you howl out your song
Your nurse is cute and she dotes on you
Though you know you’re all alone
And sometimes when you close your eyes
You feel like you’re dying back at home
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A.M. Rodriguez Athens, Georgia
Rodriguez is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and audio engineer currently based out of Athens,
Georgia.
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