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 his sidekick,

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.