Two-year-olds don't know the danger inherent in ambition as it lays itself out in the wake of a course of action (you will know us by the trail of our dead, the path of destruction, the thing that the last two dipshits bent on global domination forgot before campaigns into Russia dragged into winter with the lights of Moscow somewhere over the horizon reflecting off the clouds at night in the snow) is the question, why[?].
If you're climbing a long hill, you can be strong and focussed, but when the tired starts to weigh your pace, when you start to falter, it coincides with that very question. Why?
When you play through a cute little P.A. system in the corner of a massive, empty hotel bar outside the beltway for the $300 check in the drawer and two drinks, you sing the songs and tell the jokes, but why?
You can believe what you're doing is true like an arrow flying or a straight wheel until the question makes you look and you decide to carry on or stop based on the assessment. Assessment.
I think the playing on the record is a little fast. I was probably eating adderall I bought from a girl that worked at the deli in the corner store.
There was a public service announcement about driver safety with Danika Patrick in it talking about loose hands on the wheel. I was regularly going to the church of hardly any bourbon all afternoon. My uncles had regaled me with stories of hitting every bar in a loop around lake Charlevoix, one of the finger lakes north of Traverse City. And I was finally in the kind of shape I needed to be in- to drink all day and still be in control enough to drive safely. My body coursed with the antivenom of persistent exposure and I was barely 40. I was strong and clear eyed and rail thin.
The tenor guitar was my obsession.
I recorded the version in the thing at the top this morning, but I wanted you to see this video is why I picked this one, because the show on Friday was great and I believe in the show again.
The video is me closing my set, opening for Iris Dement at Wooly’s in Des Moines. The kid I'm talking about was an up and coming independent talent buyer, who got me the gig and advised me to play this one because he believed in my thing- that it could grow if it got in front of the right rooms. Lindberg. I mention him by name in another song, “ Why Simple Folks Don't Seem to do Nothin’”, but that's for a different day.
Srsly..like, watch the vid-e-o.like, after the lyrics
The Danika Patrick Rag
Loose hands on the wheel. Both knees on the bottle. Take a quiet road home. Take it easy on the throttle. These are dangerous times. You've got to steer clear of dangerous men.
Dangerous times tend to crush your ambition. Put your hand out the window. Make happiness your mission. If you start in to thinkin’ put your hand out the window again.
Let loose of the wheel. Take a nip off the bottle. Look all around. Push down on the throttle. Put some road behind you, and have your motor moment of zen.
Play the song on the radio loud.
Never find yourself too proud to call out who’s right, and who’s wrong. In the end write me a song.
Video:
Online Album, via the track:
Keep your stick on the ice. It ain't Nascar.
