Talkin' West Bottom Blues

We look out over the place where our two rivers meet
We look out over highways that loop and fence the town
But I don’t see the sky. All I see is ground

West Bottom sunsets drag my eyes down

Stockyard chains still swingin at the close of day
Old factories gone to gray, the color of rain clouds
But the whistles blow for nobody and no smoke
chokes the stacks. The bull still lords it over
all us frightened cows.

West Bottom blues drag us all down.

Now the cables and the power lines
Cut my vision into squares.
And the men who ride from nowhere
got to ease their troubled minds.
There’s a jumper on the 12th Street Bridge
And it’s time to bottom out.

Talkin’ West Bottom blues, make me wanna shout

See the men who work the yards
for every bean their women
ladle on their plates,
brown hands red with sangre
and tequila in their veins
Up they come from Argentine,
up they come from border towns

West Bottom blues, get a man down

Lowland nights are long and there ain’t
a rodeo in sight. But the man on Beardsley Road my brother
has got a way to pass the time. Mouth and lungs are full
of sweet mota brown

But the railroad ties are black.
And West Bottom blues have got me outta whack.

Carne asada sizzle and mariachi moans
Boulevard banditos hear the whistle down below.
West Bottom blues work them to a pitch
They got the elsewhere itch
then it’s back to Vera Cruz.

That’s right, I’m talkin’ West Bottom Blues,
The women left behind to cry
West Bottom Blues
Pretty women with their
pretty Spanish eyes

A Nopales man once told me Son, I don’t expect to find
enlightenment at the cross
nor salvation on a chain.
But there’ll be water if God wills it
Yeah, and we’ll be flooded here again
Flooded here again, like we were in ’51

The waters wash you clean
if your body’s found
West Bottom blues
They’ll make you drown
They’ll make you drown