| It’s New Year’s Day in New Orleans
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| And I’m walking to The Rib Room with the girl of my dreams
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| And when we’re walking I have thoughts I’m not sure others have
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| Like how the most underrated actor in the world is Steve Railsback
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| Who played Manson in Helter Skelter and who played Ed Gein
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| He’s been in a few Rob Zombie films too, I’m pretty sure, I think
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| Yesterday, we were at Honey Island Swamp and I was thinking about the new year
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| and what I’m gonna do
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| And I thought about the movie Southern Comfort with Keith Carradine, Fred Ward,
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| Peter Coyote, and Powers Boothe
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| And the slide guitar soundtrack of Ry Cooder
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| And how Powers Boothe could’ve played Vincent Bugliosi in the movie Helter
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| Skelter, Manson’s famous prosecutor
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| I could’ve pursued acting or maybe been one of those soundtrack guys
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| But I’m a songwriter and writing songs is my calling 'til the day I die
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| Gonna write songs that make people laugh, cry, happy
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| Angry songs that make grown man shit their pants like little fucking babies
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| Songs about lazy little cats sleeping on 9th ward porches
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| Songs 'bout pitbulls howling in cages at police stations while the cops process
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| their pimp dog owners
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| The first chapter of a book about Maurice Ravel
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| He was born a few years after my home was built and that’s put me in a spell
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| Thinking about Marx, Freud, and Einstein and the late 19th century
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| And then we started to doze off in the afternoon because we were feeling pretty
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| sleepy
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| From all of that good rich Southern food that we ate
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| Turtle soup, grits, salmon with creme fraiche
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| Remoulade shrimp, and fried catfish plates
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| Last night, we watched fireworks along the Mississippi
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| And I got a call from my friend in Tennessee and it was her grandmother’s 97th
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| birthday
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| She’s the closest thing to a grandmother that I’ve ever had
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| She makes oyster stuffing every Thanksgiving
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| But the last time that I had it, I was sleeping in her basement in 1990 reading
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| Riders on the Storm
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| I was obsessed with the Doors
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| But didn’t care for the perspective of John Densmore
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| This past Christmas Day, my dad’s friend Dan Engelberg died
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| In a hospital bed at the old age of 99
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| Weeks away from turning 100
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| And the Saturday before, he talked to my dad and said he was ready to go
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| And that he loved my dad and that he was one of the best friends he’s ever had
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| And I called my dad Christmas night and he was quiet and said it hadn’t quite
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| hit him yet
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| And I talked to my friend last night
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| And she was at home with the shingles
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| All alone on New Years' Eve
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| Someone else was watching her children
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| Cause she’s not well enough to handle them by herself these days
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| She was tuning out watching True Detective on DVD
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| And right now, me and my girl are gonna go find a place to eat
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| Try to dodge the drunken fans of the Ohio and Alabama college football teams
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| Playing at the Superdome right now as I write
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| It’s hard getting out of this big, soft bed tonight
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| Just back from Saint Charles Tavern where they were blasting the game
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| She had bread pudding and I had chocolate chip pancakes
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| She keeps talking about adopting a dog or a cat
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| And I keep talking about which guitarist I’m gonna bring to Japan
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| When I finally go to sleep, I hope to have a nice dream
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| About my old kitty cat sniffing at the Christmas tree
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| Not a nightmare where I’m lost in a Malaysian sea
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| Snakehead fishes tearing me apart with their nasty teeth
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| You never know if it’ll be a good or a bad dream
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| But nothing beats falling asleep to the sound of the streetcar in New Orleans
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| And I dreamed that it was 1978
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| And I lived in Central City and it was a warm autumn day
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| And me and my friends went to see Ali/Spinks 2 at the dome
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| And we walked back to someone’s house, so excited about how we’d seen the fight
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| of the decade in New Orleans
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| And we laughed all night on a muggy front porch 'til the sun came up
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| And then the dream cut to the back bedroom of a shotgun style house
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| And I was looking around the room and the walls were purple and gold
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| The radio was on, then I woke up, it was January 2nd
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| I picked up a guitar that I bought at a pawn shop |