Ali/Spinks 2 - Sun Kil Moon

It’s New Year’s Day in New Orleans

And I’m walking to The Rib Room with the girl of my dreams

And when we’re walking I have thoughts I’m not sure others have

Like how the most underrated actor in the world is Steve Railsback

Who played Manson in Helter Skelter and who played Ed Gein

He’s been in a few Rob Zombie films too, I’m pretty sure, I think

Yesterday, we were at Honey Island Swamp and I was thinking about the new year

and what I’m gonna do

And I thought about the movie Southern Comfort with Keith Carradine, Fred Ward,

Peter Coyote, and Powers Boothe

And the slide guitar soundtrack of Ry Cooder

And how Powers Boothe could’ve played Vincent Bugliosi in the movie Helter

Skelter, Manson’s famous prosecutor

I could’ve pursued acting or maybe been one of those soundtrack guys

But I’m a songwriter and writing songs is my calling 'til the day I die

Gonna write songs that make people laugh, cry, happy

Angry songs that make grown man shit their pants like little fucking babies

Songs about lazy little cats sleeping on 9th ward porches

Songs 'bout pitbulls howling in cages at police stations while the cops process

their pimp dog owners

The first chapter of a book about Maurice Ravel

He was born a few years after my home was built and that’s put me in a spell

Thinking about Marx, Freud, and Einstein and the late 19th century

And then we started to doze off in the afternoon because we were feeling pretty

sleepy

From all of that good rich Southern food that we ate

Turtle soup, grits, salmon with creme fraiche

Remoulade shrimp, and fried catfish plates

Last night, we watched fireworks along the Mississippi

And I got a call from my friend in Tennessee and it was her grandmother’s 97th

birthday

She’s the closest thing to a grandmother that I’ve ever had

She makes oyster stuffing every Thanksgiving

But the last time that I had it, I was sleeping in her basement in 1990 reading

Riders on the Storm

I was obsessed with the Doors

But didn’t care for the perspective of John Densmore

This past Christmas Day, my dad’s friend Dan Engelberg died

In a hospital bed at the old age of 99

Weeks away from turning 100

And the Saturday before, he talked to my dad and said he was ready to go

And that he loved my dad and that he was one of the best friends he’s ever had

And I called my dad Christmas night and he was quiet and said it hadn’t quite

hit him yet

And I talked to my friend last night

And she was at home with the shingles

All alone on New Years' Eve

Someone else was watching her children

Cause she’s not well enough to handle them by herself these days

She was tuning out watching True Detective on DVD

And right now, me and my girl are gonna go find a place to eat

Try to dodge the drunken fans of the Ohio and Alabama college football teams

Playing at the Superdome right now as I write

It’s hard getting out of this big, soft bed tonight

Just back from Saint Charles Tavern where they were blasting the game

She had bread pudding and I had chocolate chip pancakes

She keeps talking about adopting a dog or a cat

And I keep talking about which guitarist I’m gonna bring to Japan

When I finally go to sleep, I hope to have a nice dream

About my old kitty cat sniffing at the Christmas tree

Not a nightmare where I’m lost in a Malaysian sea

Snakehead fishes tearing me apart with their nasty teeth

You never know if it’ll be a good or a bad dream

But nothing beats falling asleep to the sound of the streetcar in New Orleans

And I dreamed that it was 1978

And I lived in Central City and it was a warm autumn day

And me and my friends went to see Ali/Spinks 2 at the dome

And we walked back to someone’s house, so excited about how we’d seen the fight

of the decade in New Orleans

And we laughed all night on a muggy front porch 'til the sun came up

And then the dream cut to the back bedroom of a shotgun style house

And I was looking around the room and the walls were purple and gold

The radio was on, then I woke up, it was January 2nd

I picked up a guitar that I bought at a pawn shop