Lyrics

met him outside of a music store, he tried to sell me a diamond ring
while his bipolar junkie hooker ladyfriend was shoplifting guitar strings.
He had an Oldsmobile Toronado that looked to be pretty well spent,
but they were driving it down to Atlanta to see the String Cheese Incident.

Six months later I saw him again at a Thursday night open mic.
He had a Gibson guitar made before I was born, I don't think I'd ever seen the like.
He was razor thin and he stunk like gin, but none of that meant a thing,
when he pushed off the bar, strapped on his guitar, and I heard the angels sing.

I'd never heard the blues played like that, there was so much I had to know.
There were five names left on the sign-up sheet, but he had already stolen the show.
It took me a while to get through the crowd as the lights began to dim,
?cause women who never looked at any man twice were crawling all over him.

Ten minutes in the spotlight had taken ten years off his age,
like he'd poured all his living into that guitar, all the passion, love, and rage.
I said "I like the way you did that. Could I maybe get a lesson from you?"
Well his eyes filled up and his lower lip shook, he said "son I couldn't do that to you."

"You see, this guitar soaked up some voodoo in some federally protected wetlands.
And now the voodoo done got into me too, ?cause I don't think I was born with these hands.
If I ever found a woman who could love me half as good as this guitar,
I'd turn from sin, I'd never play again, but I don't think that it's in the cards."

Five years later I opened the paper, he was there on the second page.
At a benefit show for public TV he collapsed right there on the stage.
Cause of death had not been determined, but what really tore me down,
was that guitar disappeared when it hit the floor, and it has not yet been found.

Lately I just can't pull the crowds to these music halls and bars.
I'm trying to die from disappointment, so I won't have to sell my guitar.
So last night I drove south ?til the land got flat, I saw water rolling under the fog.
And now I'm putting my guitar in a stolen canoe and I'm paddling into the bog.