Robert Earl Keen - The Great Hank lyrics

rate me

Then there was the time

I saw the great Hank Williams singing on the stage in Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania and he was all dressed up in drag

From his rose red lips to his rhinestone hips he belted

out song after song as he drank from a brown paper bag

And the songs he sang of love and pain,

so pure perfect reflections of human imperfections,

it damn near choked me up

But the rest of the show, was kind of slow

And then someone woke me up

Later on the Astros were silently beating the living crap

out of Cincinnati on the TV above

and a little to the left of the great Hank Williams' head

As a busty suicide blonde waitress poured him a double shot of 'whatever you got'

and laughingly said "I thought you were dead"

The pool balls cracked as he tilted his head back

and told her how he had been a big star but now country music was full of freaks

He sat there, in the TV glare

Mascara streaked his cheeks

When I was only sixteen years old I went from Houston to Abilene

with a spunky stunningly handsome woman in a Volkswagen Bug

She was grown with some kids all her own,

a committment-free divorcee, and I was a man in love

We had only one 8-track tape but it was of the late great

Hank Williams and we sang in two-part harmony

"Hey good lookin', how's about cookin'

Something up with me"

Back at the bar they were calling last call

so I gave the barmaid a credit card to pay up my tab

The TV was turned off and the stage was dark

and the great Hank Williams was gone so I asked her to call me a cab

She said if you like I can give you a ride,

so there we were out the door and into the city of brotherly love

Into the night, out of sight

In a VW Bug