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 hissidekick,
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-bitch 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