He’s come to make love on your satin sheets
Wake up on your living room floor
He’s the last of the hard-core troubadours
…decades later, and this song still makes me want to start a band. Hard-Core Troubadour, track 2 from Steve Earle‘s 1996 album, I Feel Alright, which is Lesson #1 in Rock & Roll Songwriting, both for its lyrical content and for containing all five of the Top-5 Greatest Drum Punctuations in history.
Last night I dreamed that I woke up with straps across my chest
And something cold and black pullin’ through my lungs
And even Jesus couldn’t save me though I know he did his best
But he don’t live on Ellis Unit One…
…from Ellis Unit One, by Steve Earle, track #8 on Side Tracks, about a very certain stretch of Death Row and originally written for the film Dead Man Walking, and still one of the most masterfully written songs I’ve ever heard.
Girl, better figure out which is which
Wherefore art thou Romeo you son of a bitch
You’d just as soon fight as switch now wouldn’t you
He’s come to make love on your satin sheets
Wake up on your living room floor
He’s the last of the hard-core troubadours
…from Hard-Core Troubadour, Track #2 from Steve Earle‘s greatest album, I Feel Alright.
For the record…this is my all-time favorite song. Not even close.
See my dreams before my eyes/ Shadows on the wall, I/ Ain’t got no place I can fall
Snowin’ in off the lake/ Punching holes in the dark/ Through the lonely streets of Roger’s Park
…Rogers Park, from Justin Townes Earle‘s damn near perfect album, Harlem River Blues
Now there’s a lyric that’s poetry in its own right. Punching holes in the dark? C’mon. Are you kidding me? But what makes Justin Townes Earle a brilliant songwriter isn’t the lyrics. It’s how he drops the bottom out of that second line, wrapping it around the chord progression and hammering down on the minor chord. And man, it hits like a sledgehammer. It’s brilliant despite my obsession with wraparound lyrics. There’s a loneliness between the first and second lines you wouldn’t otherwise have, and what do you get for it? Take a listen…
Harlem River Blues was released in 2010 when JTE was 28 years old. His previous album was released a year earlier, so we can assume he was writing these songs at the age of 26 or 27.
Twenty-five years earlier, his old man wrote this song, which was released on Guitar Town when he was 31 years old:
Lovers leave and friends’ll let you down/ But you’re the only sure thing that I’ve found/ No matter what I do I’ll never lose/ My old friend the blues
Runs in the family, eh? The way that Daddy Earle opens a trap door beneath that D chord in the next to last line, letting the D7 sway around…you don’t even realize that you’re the one hanging from the gallows. And then he resolves the final line with every songwriter’s favorite chorus-ender, the good ol’ IV-V-I turnaround, which isn’t exactly how Rogers Park ends, but sure as hell feels like it, if only for the way it leaves you floating in the air.
It’s haunting, truly. And apparently it’s something you’re born with.