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Roadside Butterflies

from Another Hunt by J Roth

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about

Somewhere in his late teens J discovered the works of Jack Kerouac and became convinced a grand adventure awaited him hitchhiking around the country. J's first trips were with college buddies, but eventually he was ready to head out on his own. He bought an undersized guitar, packed a few belongings and hit the road. Ups and downs awaited him as he played and sang his way along the highways and byways. The chord progression to Roadside Butterflies was composed on the road in 1993. The lyrics were added in 1999 when J looked back through his notes of the various characters (recorded dutifully) who picked him up along the way.

J played his old beat-up Washburn guitar on this recording. Though not the same guitar that had accompanied him on his hitchhiking misadventures, the Washburn had been there with him on many of his world travels.

lyrics

Look at that beetle crawlin' there on the asphalt, man, he's getting somewhere faster than me
The crickets though seem willing to hang around and give me a little ditch-side company
Frontage road bushes make a cave for me to spend the night
With a wake-up call before sunrise to the glow of the Chevron light

Big Lenny-lanking Robin Cobb greets me highway side,
says he's hitchin' from 'Zona to Maine
We Laurel-and-Hardyed it together across the New Mexican plain
Couple of girls of the gilded flower-power, they got us to a drunken revelry at a rest stop, but Cobb and me, for that day we'd had enough thrills, we went to sleep there in the sand as the lights of Albuquerque shone across the hills
No, that night the gun shooting, laughter heaping, four-wheeling, couldn't be keeping me from sleeping
Next morning, sun was just peeping, waking up on the sand,
ol' Cobb got me to laugh almost to weeping, the way he shimmied out
from his blanket where a scorpion was creeping
Come on, man, time to keep on, keep on, keep on, keep on,
keepin' on... keepin' on...

Despair and hope shake they my hand like some clutching drunk that I can't stand
With each car that passes me by, I look to see if they'll at least look me in the eyes
Some say “life is a journey”, me, I had to get out and see
Why I was feeling so afraid in the land of the brave, so enslaved in the home of the free
What's got... What's got into me?

Man said his name was Cat Head and he drank his beer from a bottle in a brown bag
Took me past a pit-bull farm while about his guns-and-hustling days he did kinda, sorta brag
It was a cardboard mattress that kept me dry one night as I lay stranded between a forest and a concrete wall
I remember the rain off those Tennessee pine boughs softly drip, drip drip, drop, drop, drop and fall

Dennis took me across West Virginia, he'd served between the ice
and the Antarctic snow dunes
He conjured an image of the sun's setting for the last time in months –
he made it sound lonelier than the moon
Was a Pennsylvanian priest not quite primped for the pulpit
who got me a bit further down the line
He asked me big questions about my life without too much proselytizin' on the sly

It might as well have been Oz, arriving in Minneapolis with guitar
and dust-of-the-road on my hiking pack
Taking the big red bus across town to my parents' home,
I was the only white face in the back
“Play some Motown, man,” challenged one tough-looking brother for all to hear
I gave him some Smokey Robinson “it's easy to trace the tracks of my tears” but he wouldn't sing with me, became him, not me who was feeling fear

Despair and hope shake my hand like some clinging drunk that I can't stand
With each day that passes me by, I keep a look-out from the corner of my eyes
Some say “life is a journey”, me, I had to get out and see
Why I was feeling so afraid in the land of the brave, so estranged in the home of the free
What's got into me? What's got me?

It was just North of Denver, finally got a ride –
the man had a face half-paralyzed with a Winston poking out of it
Near Durango, where I figured they'd be hip to my tango, no one helped me along on my trip
Dusk – Crawling across the Continental Divide, in the back of a pick-up with a Spanish-speaking man's groceries I did ride
Trust – He offered me a bed in a trailer he had behind his home, but I ended up side of the road - shivering all night – I just couldn't stop roamin'
Next day, on the rez, I was warned of shapeshifters who, take my soul they just might
Maybe those couple of Navajo saved me, who for the price of a six-pack
put me up for the night
Stuck for hours outside Gallup made it clear with my eyes to the drifter comin' towards my spot I didn't want to pal up
Surprise surprise, fifteen yards down the line a truck stops to give him a ride
I dashed after them and was allowed to jump in – the drifter made it clear with his eyes – no offense was taken
But as the threat of a snowstorm lit up the horizon and lightning showed signs of a demon he'd known
He quickly asked the driver to pull over and that weather-worn angel got out and let the wind take him wherever it was blowin' he was goin' goin' goin' goin' gone

Despair and hope shake they my hand like some clutching drunk that I can't stand
With each car that passes me by, I look to see if they'll at least look me in the eyes
Some say “life is a journey”, me, I had to get out and see
Why I was feeling so afraid in the land of the brave, so enslaved in the home of the free
What's got... What's got into me?

To the roadside is where some butterfly collectors find their yield
Where the fancy flight of colors meets the unforgiving face of the windshield
Along the roadside the collectors don't need their nets
As they pick out the bodies from among the smoked-down cigarettes

credits

from Another Hunt, released December 7, 2008
J Roth > guitar and vocals

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J Roth Minneapolis, Minnesota

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