This video is from right around when the song was born. There's an additional verse. Opening for Irirs Dement at Woolies in Des Moines winter 2013.
This ties in to last week's deal. I had a long really nice conversation with someone I have known for a long time but not very well about a song I had written a long long time ago recorded a long time ago, released in the limited way I have available to me, and then, rather recently made a video of myself playing and put on YouTube. There'll be a link to it in the description. It's not the song this episode covers, but the conversation we had ties the whole thing together. The song in the video he had seen seemed to him to be about the place he was in his mature relationship, in a sense. He ended up revealing himself to me in a way that surprised me. It was entirely unselfconscious because he was just talking about this song. He was telling me what he heard in it. In telling me the things he liked about it he ended up talking about himself. I let him of course. I didn't tell him I saw him.
I did tell him it was an old song and that I never played it out. It's not really a show song. It's a whisper- in-your-ear song.
Then he wondered again unselfconsciously why I'd write a song I never play out.
I've written a lot of songs for a lot of reasons and maybe just as many for no reason at all, because they occurred to me. Sometimes I write 'em because I think I'm good at writing songs. When I think about it that seems like the worst reason to do it. Sometimes I imagine I'll get famous for doing it, or rich, but that can't be a reason to make a thing that's what could be called good art.
All these concepts came up in our conversation.
I supposed I just got in the habit.
This one I wrote because a miracle happened when I was day drinking.
We had a new years eve gig. I always was doing art and being presented as entertainment. Like, here make them dance and drink, and I was like, these are songs about real things. There was often a disconnect in a bar gig or a celebration.
Beside the point here. All of this so far is.
The weather was supposed to be bad New Year's Eve day. So the guitarist besides myself who played in the band came up a day early. We drank the night before and then we got up and went out the next day as well. It was pissing rain and at freezing temperature and it was maybe gonna be an ice storm.
I ordered food. He glowered at me and ordered a beer. He gave me some heat about it. I ordered a beer after I ate and then another and then, once in the spirit, I ordered us both a shot of whiskey.
He wouldn't touch it. I shot my whiskey and the sun poked out through the clouds for a minute. We sat while the weather progressed. There was probably football on. The normal lovingly tumbled riff raff of holiday adjacent daytime public intoxication flocked in around us and eventually it was time to drive the two or three blocks over to where the gig was and set up and check. We stood to leave and said our goodbyes and right before we hit the door I shot Darren’s whiskey I'd bought for him. Then, as we stepped out into the street the clouds broke and it warmed a little and it was nice the rest of the day and the new years eve gig was underwhelming until Auld Lang Syne.
And the line, “the sun don't just shine when I drink my whiskey, it shines when I drink yours too.” came out of the day and the rest of the song is just the life support for that line. The stories in it built themselves around that line. I was writing songs to perform without the band.
I was over the band and all that went with it. I wrote a pile of songs with no audience or band or end in mind. This one was one of the first.
The Highwayman’s Wife.
I didn't break from camp and ride this road so I could steel your money from you.
I've been laying down with a Highwayman's wife, so that's what I do.
And the sun don't just shine when I drink my whiskey, it shines when I drink yours too.
Stand and deliver. Do what I tell you to do.
I took my mother a store bought bird and she turned me away at the door.
She said, a man who makes his money like you don't need to come around here no more.
Me and them highway boys cooked that goose and told stories about the war.
Sometimes your rich sometimes you're poor.
A man who lives fine true to his heart can't keep no family at all, except for one that's brave enough to leave by the side of the road when the wild birds call.
Whimsy is the muse of the brave of heart and tribulation is fall.
All for one and one for all.
I didn’t break from camp and ride this road so I could steel your money from you.
I’ve been laying down with a Highwayman’s wife, so that’s what I do.
And the sun don’t just shine when I drink my whiskey, it shines when I drink yours too.
Stand and deliver. Do what I tell you to do.
I think when people are at their best, they just do what occurs to them to do. The inclinations we follow tend to suit us, I think. It can get cloudy from drink or sidetracked by duty or develop into a pattern we think we recognize and grind away within, but making the thing because it occurs to you that it is time to make that thing and for no other reason is why I'd write a song and never play it out.
I rob coaches, because I'm fucking a Highwayman's wife. It’s what we're on about. War is a racket. I'm the damage. Empty your pockets. The sun don't just shine when I drink my whiskey, it shines when I drink yours too.
This song is part of a collection of strays that people have told me they liked and never got on a record. The collection is called Lucky 13.
It's mostly just myself and a guitar. They're things I felt to be unworthy of public display after having showed them once or twice. Songs that someone eventually came to me and said, remember such and such song from such and such show? Whatever happened to that one?
It's the ones I quit playing because I thought they weren't good in shows, but someone else thought they were.
It ain't up to me. And as I get older I feel obliged to share the lot. The omissions I have made serve nothing. They are not in fact crap. They're art I made once and self-consciously hid, and sometimes when I show them, the sun comes out and I can see the world and people because I showed them and it's good. It's worth it.
Thank you.
https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/lucky-13
https://youtu.be/P_RDWBD1Vj8?si=r7-iVf4qRTUdU_zC
This is the song that inspired the conversation that inspired the last two episodes. We'll get back on the train to rock and roll next week.
See also What? Music? 19 for more about the recording of As Night Falls.
