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Country Song

from The Tingles by The Tingles

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Country Song:

This was a song for my Bro Steve, who fled from the South of California to the South of Carolina. He always said: “life is like a county song ---gone bad!”
He has a heap of guitars at his place too; we talk about it over Skype. This one is for you El Steve!
Be Seeing You!
Dan

Nick's Liner Notes

Country Song: Liner Notes

According to Willie Nelson, "Three Chords and the Truth—That's What a Country Song Is." Well, it that's true, this song is half way to being a country song, since it has those three chords, and only three. The "truth" part is a harder call, though this song is based, as was "The Curse," on a true story or rather on multiple true stories, since I am sure this story is told in one way or another many times a day, around Nashville and probably in rural China too. But then we hedged our bets a little. The refrain runs:

Heading down that long road
All I got is gone
Feels like I am stuck inside
A real BAD country song....

So if we ain't got the truth...or hit it somehow...it could still be a country song, though a REAL BAD one, making allowances though for that particular inflection in the sixties when BADD meant GOOD.

So perhaps the truth is ambiguous. And while it might not be the truth exactly, I do pride myself on having imparted at least a little social realism and immediate relevance with:

We'd lived too long on credit
Up to our necks in debt
When everything had been sold
There wasn't nothing left...

A reference again to hard times. At one point I worked a yard sale into the song, but the rhyme didn't work out.

And finally I can't think of being stuck inside something without thinking of Dylan's "Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again."

lyrics

Country Song

Out a work, puttering round the yard
I guess I got into drinking a little bit too hard
She was a working, started staying out
Before I could bat an eye, the whole thing had gone south.

Heading down that long road
All I got is gone
Feels like I am stuck inside
A real bad country song

I come home one evening she had moved out
Oh, so sad and lonely inside that empty house
We'd lived too long on credit, up to our necks in debt
When everything had be sold, there wasn't nothing left

Heading down that long road
All I got is gone
Feels like I am stuck inside
A real bad country song

She up and left me for another man
Giving explanations I won't ever understand
It broke like a glass on the cold concrete floor
And I broke the key off in the lock when I bolted the last door

Heading down that long road
All I got is gone
Feels like I am stuck inside
A real bad country song

Good bye everybody! You won't be seeing me around
Nothing left for me in this town
No, there's nothing left for me here
And all I leave behind is just thirty years

Heading down that long road
All I got is gone
Feels like I am stuck inside
A real bad country song

credits

from The Tingles, released March 23, 2011
Nick Tingle: Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Percussion
Dan Tingle: Vocals, Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Bass, Banjo, Mandolin, Percussion

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The Tingles Santa Barbara, California

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