My Daddy played poker in the woods they say, back in his younger days.
Prohibition was the talk, but the rich folks walked to the woods where my Daddy stayed.
Jugs and jars from shiners, these old boys here, they ain't miners.
They came from the twenty-niners.
It didn't take a hole in the ground to put the bottom in their face.
Back in the 30s when the dust bowl dried
and the woods in Alabama didn't see no light,
my daddy played poker by a hard wood fire,
squeezing all his luck from a hot copper wire.
Scrap like a wildcat fights till the end.
Trap a wildcat and take his skin.
Deal from the bottom, put the ace in the hole.
One hand on the jug but you never do know.
Son come running,
you better come quick,
this rotgut moonshine is making me sick.
Your mama called the law and they're gonna take me away,
down so far even the Devil won't stay.
Where I call to the Lord with of all my soul,
I can hear Him rattling the chains on the door.
He couldn't get in, I could see He tried,
through the shadows of the cage 'round the forty watt light.
Daddy tell me another story,
tell me about the lows and the highs.
Tell me how to tell the difference between what they tell me is the truth or a lie.
Tell me why the ones who have so much make the ones who don't go mad.
With the same skin stretched over their white bones and the same jug in their hand.
My daddy played poker on a stump in the woods, back when the world was gray.
Before black and white went and chose up sides and gave a little bit of both away.
The only blood that's any cleaner is the blood that's blue or greener.
Without either you just get meaner and the blood you gave gives you away.
Son come running,
you better come quick,
this rotgut moonshine is making me sick.
Your mama called the law and they're gonna take me away,
down so far even the Devil won't stay.
Where I call to the Lord with of all my soul,
I can hear Him rattling the chains on the door.
He couldn't get in, I could see He tried,
through the shadows of the cage 'round the forty watt light.