Desperadoes waiting for a train

I played the Red River Valley

He'd sit in the kitchen and cry

Run his fingers through seventy years of livin'

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

We were friends, me and this old man

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Desperados waitin' for a train

Well, he's a drifter an' a driller of oil wells

And an old school man of the world

He taught me how to drive his car when he w's too drunk to

Oh, and he'd wink and give me money for the girls

An' our lives were like, some old Western movie

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train

An' from the time that I could walk, he'd take me with him

To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe

An' there was old men with beer guts and dominos

Oh, an they're lying 'bout their lives while they played

An' I was just a kid, that they all called his sidekick

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train

One day I looked up and he's pushin' eighty

An' he's brown tobacco stains all down his chin

Well, to me he's one of the heroes of this country

So why's he all dressed up like them old men?

He's drinkin' beer and playin' Moon and Forty-two

Like a desperado waitin' for a train

Like a desperado waitin' for a train

An' then the day before 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 another verse to that old song

Come on, Jack, that son-of-a-***** is comin'

We're like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train