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American Guitar

from Texas by Fred Smith

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lyrics

American Guitar
1
Like the immigrants who came before I got here hoping I could make a little more
JFK in to the Brooklyn Heights saw Manhattan shining on that summer's night
all that real estate and all that cash cant be hard to make myself a little stash
thought I knew why I'd come this far just to play on American guitar

2
Learned to book the gigs and trust my luck learned on stage it's often better not to suck
Met a lot of good men living out of cars trying to make a living Pickin on guitars
Drive through old towns with their new Wal-Marts three McDonald's and a ghost town in the heart
Got me thinking how we go so far just to play on American guitar

3
Scukyll freeway in the Jersey Pike i road the interstates they built for uncle Ike
think I would've liked your Eisenhower whole lot better than the monkey you got now
stuck in the bunker with the Baghdad blues like Mister pyle with specks of blood upon your shoes
Good intentions but your gonna leave a scar the Arabs will never play American guitar

4.
I've seen the Mississippi frozen at St. Clair across the Hudson and the mighty Delaware
Rocky Mountains busting young into the sky Appalachians aging mellow like a Rye
guess I'm saying it's still a beautiful place mountains and rivers were a founds such easy grace
good enough reason to have come this far just to play on American guitar

5
seen Manassas been to Fredericksburg where Burnside boys are laying underneath the turf
20,000 in a single day took three more to lay them underneath the clay
Carolinans under Robert E. Lee modem down from the heights of St. Marye
chasing glory always going too far just to play on American guitar

6
midnight highway and the big trucks roll I’m plowing north through all the wind and ice and snow
three white crosses on the side of the road if I should perish it won't you let my mother know
I know she's wishing I was home in bed making babies like my little brother Ed
guess she wonders why I'd come this far just to play on an American guitar

credits

from Texas, released August 31, 2020

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Fred Smith Canberra, Australia

“Fred Smith is simply the best folk/country musician working in this country in 2020. Beyond writing some of the finest songs about Australians at war, he has created a repertoire that is wry, literate, witty, powerfully emotional and insightful.”(Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald). ... more

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