Bobryanmusic.com: The Tracks

A song about a run-in with temptation. I wrote this shortly after I left home for the first time to pursue music half a continent away from my family and friends. I found myself at a weak moment thinking I should chuck it all in and go home. Written in a trailer park in the Midwest.

Southwestern Temptation Blues

I met a man from Texas, he was talking with a drawl
Of things that I had no need to remember.
I closed my ears and ran from him, he followed at a crawl,
Fanning into flames a long-dead ember.

He said he knew a way back to the place where I belonged,
I begged him not to tempt me with decision.
His tongue was painting pictures of a land for which I longed;
I knew I could not long resist the vision.

"Leave me to my destiny," I pleaded, out of fear,
"You are the voice of ruin, dressed up in leather.
Get behind me, Texan," I did shout, but he would not hear,
He swore that we would leave that place together.

I stumbled down a side road, he was hot upon my heel,
He knew my every move, right to the letter.
And as my strength gave out, and I was falling for his deal,
I fell into the hand of someone better.

I fell into the hand of one who would not speak to me,
One word that would betray me, at its ending;
Who forced that Texan back along the road he'd offered me,.
And the scar it left inside is slowly mending.


1972; Edwardsville, Illinois
© Bob Ryan / Leaping Armadillo Music