Ballad of A Traveler’s Sunday

I got to Mississippi with my heart in my hand.
I was thinkin’ Alabama was the promised land.
Drinking beer out of cowboy boots in the back of a truck.

Wrote a letter to my Mama and the letter said
“I met a girl in Tennessee who was almost dead.
From takin’ pills in the hills in a tree where lightning struck.”

Was when I was a hitchhiker in a foreign land
And I got picked up by a Gospel band.
The lead singer had a vile of Virginia and his name was Bill.

He showed me a picture of his motorbike.
It was a soft-tail custom that he seemed to like.
He said “Ridin’ this thing’s like bein’ in church on steel.”

CHORUS – (2x)

Ridin’ this thing’s like bein’ in church
Ridin’ this thing’s like bein’ in church
Ridin’ this thing’s like bein’ in church on steel, steel, steel, steel…

VERSE 2

Natchez Fall, when the moon gets green
It’s enough to make the born again get mean.
And in the dance-flow Jane Doe whispered "Do you have a car"?

And in the campsite, moonlight (whiskey even tastes right)
Underneath a pup-tent (makin’ love at midnight)
Stars and guitars and promises I can’t keep.

Well I slept beside her collie with a Bible name.
The site of her asleep filled me up with shame
Then I cried thinkin’ every living thing would die in sin.

Jane Doe woke when she heard me cry
She said “It looks as if the Devil’s been a tellin’ ya’ lies”
And she insisted if I listened to the crickets I could hear Him again.

‘Cause when fires die and pleasures lie
And you measure all the silence on Sinai,
Jane Doe said with a voice that sounded like gin.

Said “Ride your regret and it’ll leave ya’ cold.
Ride your ambition and your gift gets sold.
But ridin’ this train’s like bein’ in church on skin!”

CHORUS – (2x)

Ridin’ this train’s like bein’ in church.
Ridin’ this train’s like bein’ in church.
Ridin’ this train’s like bein’ in church on skin, skin, skin, skin…

VERSE 3

Tupelo Mississippi in the Elvis shack
I saw Mark Twain have a heart attack.
Before he died his old lady made sure he was good with God.

I woke up still drunk on Bourbon Street.
Huckleberry Finn was massaging my feet.
Then he handed me a flask, and he asked “Why’d you steal my gun?”

Then the whore from before (at the Bad-Boy store)
Took a ferry to a parish called “Elsinore”.
And her barks in the dark turned to coos in the morning sun.

Where the Mighty Mississippi (on depression pills)
Rememberin’ the faces of the men he’s killed
He writes a suicide letter he addresses to his wife and son.

“To my wife and my boy, don’t grieve me long.
All the sunken treasure and the ships gone wrong
Done cracked this saddle on my back and I can’t flow free.

So tell the folk-singers and the poets too.
Never to forget what the River goes through.
Cause’ ridin’ this tide’s like bein’ in church on the MISS-ISS-IPP-I River, baby!"

CHORUS – (3x)

Ridin’ this tide’s like bein’ in church
Ridin’ this tide’s like bein’ in church
Ridin’ this tide’s like bein’ in church on the
MISSISSIPPI River Baby!

Ridin’ this tide’s like bein’ in church
Ridin’ this tide’s like bein’ in church
Ridin’ this tide’s like bein’ in church on ME.