Bobryanmusic.com: The Tracks

South Dakota Bound

(Bob Ryan)

Written for the Open Door @ Nite play "The Wheedler Weekly Herald." A little bit of what the 12-step people call "Doing a geographical" This may be the same guy that's wandering around the high plains in "Your Wandering Baby Boy." Sounds like him.

I've heard people say that South Dakota
Is a long, hard stretch of nothing.
But I've seen New York City
And it's nothing like a garden of delight.
This black band of county highway
Led me out of town last early autumn,
And if I keep on driving,
It is bound to lead me back sometime tonight.
Miles of crowded city spaces,
Miles of asphalt linking lonely towns.
Nothing changes but the faces.
Might as well be South Dakota bound.

Everybody chasing after something,
While they run from something other.
All the stories sound about the same,
In all the places I have gone.
I keep hoping there'll be something better,
Up beyond the next horizon,
After all the unfulfilled horizons
Back along this road I'm on.
Miles of crowded city spaces,
Miles of asphalt linking lonely towns.
Nothing changes but the faces.
Might as well be South Dakota bound.

Some folks say the blues is South Dakota,
And the cure is New York City.
Others say Dakota is the cure
For what the city brings to mind.
I've already wasted too much time out on this long, unbending highway...
Bouncing back and forth between the two
With all my blues still close behind.