Steve Earle - The Tennessee Kid lyrics

rate me

(Verse)

On Mardi Gras day the Tennessee kid

Awoke in a puddle of his own worse fears

Haunted by the ghost of vague remembrance

No corporeal beast he could name

So the kid invoked Lucifer himself

For those most grievously discourteous

And charged him with some myth forth to a town

At the crossroads celebrated in a song, come on

(Verse 2)

Up jumped the devil in the middle of the ____(?) fair

'Who dares utter my most secret name!' he roared

But the kid yielded not so much as an inch to uncertainty

Stead bast to rejoin the enemy in kind

'Oh, _____(?), Satan, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub'

'By any other name you ain't nothin' like a rose'

And they gutted his loins to the ill suited onslaught

The devil only shrugged and the kid shuddered when he heard him say

'Hey hey hey, hey hey hey hey, hey hey hey hey hey'

'Balance comes due some day'

(Verse 3)

'Wait just one goddamn minute!' cried the kid from the crumbleland(?!)

'You've neva mentioned nothin' about no kinda note'

'It just says sign here, it's just a soul, you'll never miss it'

I ain't set foot in no church since I was just a lil old thang

Reckon I would send it straight to hell by the highway

No matter how long and how hard that I prayed

So I might as well make this guitar talk

Somebody said ole' Bob Johnson came down this way

And the devil said

'Hey hey hey hey, hey hey hey, hey hey hey hey'

'Balance comes due some day'

(Verse 4)

And the monster raised himself up to the fullness of his stature

Black wings eclipsing the sandy Mississippi moon

Behold Behemot, the trampler of infidels

He who sweeps away nations with the flick of his tail

Diabulus, The Gripper, Faustus, Paganini, lured and long is the tail of my pray

Question not the iron clad bond of my surety

Sit down here and blood in your very own hand

And the Tennessee kid cast an eye on the list

Where his mark was indeed clearly and described(?!)

And he fell to his knees, but it was too late to pray

And with his very last breath he did say

'Hey hey hey hey, hey hey hey, hey hey hey hey'

'The balance comes due some day'