Lyrics:

I played the Red River Valley

He'd sit in the kitchen and cry

Run his fingers through seventy years of livin'

And wonder, "Lord, why has every well I've drilled gone dry?"



We were friends, me and this old man

We's like desperados waitin' for a train

Desperados waitin' for a train



He's a drifter, a driller of oil wells

He's an old school man of the world

He taught me how to drive his car when he was too drunk to

And he'd wink and give me money for the girls

And our lives was like, some old Western movie

Like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train



From the time that I could walk he'd take me with him

To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe

There was old men with beer guts and dominos

Lying 'bout their lives while they played

I was just a kid, they all called me "Sidekick"

Just like desperados waitin' for a train

Like desperados waitin' for a train



One day I looked up and he's pushin' eighty

He's got brown tobacco stains all down his chin

Well to me he was a hero of this country

So why's he all dressed up like them old men

Drinkin' beer and playin' Moon and Forty-two

Jus' like desperados waitin' for a train

Like a desperado waitin' for a train



The day 'fore 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 one more verse to that old song

(spoken) Come on, Jack, that son-of-a-bitch is comin'



We're desperados waitin' for a train

Was like desperados waitin' for a train