Ali / Spinks 2

It's New Year's Day in New Orleans

And I'm walking to the river with the girl of my dreams

And 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 hanging 'round the 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, I write songs in my car until the day I die

I write songs that make people laugh, cry, happy

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

Songs about lazy little cats sleeping on nice, warm porches

'Bout pitbulls howling in cages in police stations while the cops process the pimp dog owner

The first chapter of a book about Maurice Ravel

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

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

And we start to doze off in the afternoon because we were feeling pretty sleepy

From all of that good rich Southern food that we ate

Toasted grit salmon, creme fraiche, and mala shrimp, and fried catfish plates

Last night, we watched fireworks along the Mississippi

I got a call from my friend in Tennessee, 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 age of 99

Weeks away from turning 100

The Saturday before, he talked to my dad and said he was ready to go, that he loved my dad and that he was one of the best friends he's ever had

I called my dad Christmas night, he was quiet and said it hadn't quite hit him yet

I talked to my friend last night

She was at home with the shingles

All alone on New Years' Eve

Someone else was watching her children

She's not well enough to handle them by herself these days

She's 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're blasting the game

She had bread pudding and I had chocolate chip pancakes

She was talking about adopting a dog or a cat

I keep talking about which guitars 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's gonna 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

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

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

Walked back to someone’s house, so excited about the fight of the decade in New Orleans

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

The dream cut to the back bedroom of a shotgun style house

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

The radio was on, it was January 2nd, I picked up a guitar that I bought at a pawn shop