High Desert Wind

by Our Wild America

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about

It's a train robbing song. I like to think it's an outlaw giving his last rites to a priest in some Mexican border town, a final confessional. Only the priest doesn't speak any english, the train robber’s words fall on the priest's ears like the barking of a dog...

Scene: None of These Priests Speak Any Damn English

Song: High Desert Wind

Setting: Hospital at Misión San Antonio de Oquitoa, Mexico 1907

De las notas del Doctor Hidalgo - El paciente tiene cáncer de páncreas en etapa muy avanzada. El cáncer se ha esparcido por todo el cuerpo. Estamos tratando de preparar al paciente para la muerte pero no nos podemos comunicar con El. El paciente no habla espanol y no hay ninguna persona aquí con la habilidad de darle la extremaunción. Sus últimas palabras son tan indescifrables como ladridos de perro.

lyrics

Well they dressed me up for public school
But I didn't fit my suit
So I nicked my daddy's six guns
And I learned how to shoot
It was a time when men had big ideas
And big ideas tend to travel far
There's no fun in robbing telegraphs
So I rob mail train cars

Set fire to the rails
High desert wind erase my trails
Pull every man from off the train
Blow the safes then leave them all in chains
High desert wind fill my sails
Keep me far from the inside of a jail

The way the people talk back home
Their voices terrorized my brain
But high desert wind it cools my mind
When I'm out robbing trains
Now people chase a lot of things
A wife, a job, the bottom of a whiskey jar
Me I chase the gold they bring
On them west-bound mail train cars

Oh the whistle in the wind
Whoo-whoo
Union Pacific's coming in

Send the Marshalls and the Pinkertons
This is how a war begins
But as long as men have big ideas
It's a war no man can win

credits

released February 26, 2021
Recorded live to tape.

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Our Wild America Los Angeles, California

Songs to spark conversation by a singer with a guitar and harmonica then some other lovely things

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