Country
If I had red leather pointy-toed cowboy boots
and a solid gold archtop Harmony guitar
and propped my foot up on your coffee table
while I leaned back and strummed the guitar,
and if I sang with a country accent somewhere
between June Carter and Dwight Yoakam,
would you call me hillbilly, and would you listen anyway?
You don’t know me but you dont like me,
and I wonder how many times
you have walked the streets of Bakersfield?
And no, I have never been to California,
and I traded in my Stetson for my trademark
slightly dirty khaki hat
but I hung around the tunnel in Aliquippa,
strumming and walking and somebody
even took a picture of me looking out
to the west in the rain for the cover of the album
nobody bought called This Town is Union Made.
But when I was fourteen, I went to Brownsville,
Mc Allen and Reynosa, where they fed me tacos and tamales
and I fell in love with every Mexican girl
on both sides of the Rio Grande.