I come from Oregon, I’ve probably told some of you thatbefore, that’s
where I come from, I got out of school there by .. a thread. I went …
I got this ride down to Santa Rosa, California and that didn’t work out
at all, so I called my brother, he was living in Austin, he had his friends
would let him stay on their couch, and I figure they might have a couch that
I could stay on, so I got this ride to Austin, Texas and got to this address
my brother … uh .. gave me, and this guy introduced himself as Bonehead
and … I went in and started askin’ around, it turned out they didn’t
have the second couch, they just had that one couch for my brother … but
they knew … they knew where there was a party and I thought, “Well,
that’s good enough”, so … we all got in this car, we drove
across town to this party with all these people standing around drinking, and
there was this guy in the corner of the party, his name was Trogg, and he was
6-foot-8, 300 pounds, god, and he had a beer in each hand, and he was tellin’
stories, and people gathered ‘round him laughin’, they weren’t
really funny stories, but he’s 6-8, 300 pounds, so I went over there and
started laughin’ too, y’know … and then towards the end of
the party when everybody drizzled out a little bit … uh … I got
to talkin’ with Trogg, it turned out him and his friends they …
they did have an extra couch that I could stay on, so I went over to their house
and stayed there for like three months, y’know.
And we would … most of the time at night … we would listen to whatever
Trogg said we were gonna listen to on the radio, y’know … drink
beer, whatever, and … uh … one night we were sittin’ there
listenin’, and he put on a CD of this guy I’d never heard by …
Jerry Jeff Walker, that you might have … yeah … he has … if
you’ve never heard … main thing people know him for the song Mr.
Bojangles, but he’s got a ton of great songs … and I’d never
heard that kind of music before and I got so excited I told my friend, I said,
“This is it for me now!”, he said, “Well, he’s played
at this place called Green Hall, so that Friday night me and Trogg got in this
truck and we drove down to Green Hall to see Jerry Jeff, and he’d come
out kinda like tonight, like I am, with just a guitar and sang some songs, and
I thought, “Shit, I could do that!”.
So …so I went, I got myself a guitar, y’know, and I started practicin’,
a few months later I was singin’ and … uh … if you’re
like … I got all of Jerry Jeff Walker’s records, if you’re
like me, when you get a record, I like to read the inside, the notes and stuff
inside, so I was readin’ in some of Jerry Jeff Walker’s records,
it turns out he records most of his stuff in this little town, not really a
studio, but a little town called Luckenbach, Texas that you might remember from
that song … “Wille and Waylon and the boys, in Luckenbach, Texas
…”. The town itself is actually a beer hall, a post office, a house,
a parkin’ meter, and that’s the whole fuckin’ thing.
And Jerry Jeff loved to hang out there and he had become a hero, and they had
music on Fridays and Saturdays so I wanted to played there, so I sent my tape
over there and tried to get them to call me, they never did call me, and then
one night we were sittin’ around watchin’ whatever Trogg wanted
to watch on TV, y’know, and the phone rings and this woman says, “Hey,
this is Large Marge from down in Luckenbach, and our show on Saturday cancelled,
we’s wonderin’ if you could come fill in”, and I got excited,
‘cause I was six or seven months tryin’ to get a show, so I’s
so excited, my heart speedin’ up, held the phone, checked with Trogg,
he says O.K., we took the gig.
That weekend we all got into this old 450 $ car that I had and we started drivin’
down the highway towards Luckenbach, Texas … and friend and neighbors
if you’ve never been to Luckenbach, Texas you may never fuckin’
go, ‘cause … tourists take out the signs that point to it to keep
in their garage and stuff, so you get out in the desert and there’s no
sign, and of course it was just me and all my friends, ‘twas all guys
in the car, so we drove about about two and a half hours before we pulled over,
asked anybody where we was … we … and we ran on this thing called
the Devil’s Backbone Highway, right, so we finally pulled into this place
uniquely named the Devil’s Backbone Tavern and we’d go in and all
the guys said, “I gotta go in”, an’ y’know, so I’d
go in and ‘twas like one of them bars like everyone’s drinkin’
beer and they’re like, say, twenty people in ther and they make seventeen
teeth total in the whole place … and I’m not a good fighter or very
good at protectin’ myself at all, y’know, so I thought, “Well,
this could … this may not work out”, and … uh … so I
saw behind the bar, there was this one older woman, she looked like she was
in her eighties and she … huh … kinda hunched over, like I remember
my grandma starts to do, she kinda… she had curly white hair and she …
I thought, “Well, I could take her”, so I went over … over
there … I’d go up to her, I said, “Man, we’re tryin’
to find Luckenbach and we’re so lost”, and I swear this is true,
she turned around really slow, I’ll never forget it, she turned around,
she looked up at me and she kinda smiled, she says, “Fuck Luckenbach,
drink with us!” … so we did!
And at the end of the night, y’know, we had got our guitars out, we were
singin’ and everything, drinkin’ a whole bunch of beer, and I went
up to her, they called her Miss Virgy, so I said, “Miss Virgy, how much
do we owe you for the beer?”, and she says, “You don’t know
me nothin’, boy”, so we started … after that, every Friday
after that, we would go down and sing for her, y’know.
By the end of the summer I had got and made this song up, Miss Virgy, wherever
she is tonight I don’t know, but I play this for it features the hottest
guitar work that I can do … (guitar) … not this part … (more
guitar) … thank you!
Old Miss Virgy tended bar at this shack out in the hills
It never made her any money boys but paid of all her bills
Now she must have been 80 years old but her heart was warm and her beer was
cold
She gave away more than she ever sold smiling all the time
I used to sing off in the corner every Friday night
To a loud crowd of cowboys, bikers and bar room fights
They were drinking beer, carrying on, not a one of them listening to one of
my songs
But old Miss Virgy was singin’ along, she said she knew ‘em all
by heart
And then one night after closing she poured me another beer
She said “Come on over and sit down you little shit, I got something you
need to hear”
She said “Life ain’t easy getting through, everybody’s gonna
make things tough on you
But I can tell you right now if you dig what you do, they will never get you
down”
She said life’s too short to worry, life’s too long to wait
Too short not to love everybody, life’s too long to hate
I meet a lot of men who haggle and finagle all the time, trying to save a nickel
or make a dime
Not me, no sireee, I ain’t got the time
Now I ain’t seen Ol’ Virgy, I guess it’s probably been almost
18 years
I’ve been bumming around this country singing my songs for tips and beers
Now the nights are long, the driving’s tough, hotels stink, and the pay
sucks
But I can’t dig what I do enough, so it never gets be down
I say life’s too short to worry, life’s too long to wait
Too short not to love everybody, life’s too long to hate
I meet a lot of men who haggle and finagle all the time, trying to save a nickel
or make a dime
Not me, no sireee, I ain’t got the time
I told you I played there every Friday night for the rest of the summer, y’know,
and there was this one guy that used to sit in the corner every Friday night
listenin’ to me play, he’d sit over there drinkin’ beer, huggin’
like three or four teeth all to himself. And one night at the end of the summer
he’d come up to me, and we hadn’t talked the whole summer, y’know,
and he comes up to me, says, “Boeyy .. I been watchin’ you”,
and I remember I said, “Y’know, I’ve noticed and I’ve
wanted to thank you …”, and he said, “No, don’t thank
me, son … aw, you suck!”
And .. and I understood what he meant when he said I sucked … but he wanted
to go on and on about it … so he did … he said that him and his
brothers was big fans of Eddie Van Halen an’ the Eddie Van Halen Band,
he said, “Last summer we drove into Austin’ to see Eddie Van Halen
an’ the Eddie Van Halen Band, whole damn concert Eddie V. was on the top
of his job …”, he said, “You play the same three chords the
whole fuckin’ night, it sucks!”
So when I’d come up with this song I thought of ol’ Jerry Jeff of
course, and I thought of buddy Trogg, and Willie an’ Waylon an’
the boys, Eddie Van Halen an’ the Eddie Van Halen Band, bust most of all
I thought about that guy and his brothers, that’s when I’d come
up with this part … (guitar) … EAT YOU HEART OUT, YOU IN'RBRED SUMBITCH!!!