The Blues Riding Shotgun
"I hear the echoes of the road in my bones, the blues riding shotgun, heavy as a bass drum. Tired of bein’ mistreated, I ain’t here to sugarcoat the truth: don’t mess with the blues man, I’ve got the blues on top of the blues, back in town, blues man, you got the blues, let me talk some sense in ya. I was on the road to a better life, dreams in the glove compartment, but the blues stopped me cold, like a door slammed in the night. Hey, baby, what did I say? I’m whoopin’ the blues today, I’m stamping out the ash of despair with rhythm and refrain. Muddy Waters murmurs in the gutter, Sonny Terry’s harmonica sighs through the smoke, Sunny Land Slim traces shadows on the wall, Big Joe Turner’s thunder rolling down the stairwell. Smoky, run-down blues clubs on the south side, where neon bleeds into the rain, where booze, women, and drugs arc like warnings in the air. can’t even pay my rent out on the street, big blues Brownie McGhee lending a corner of his luck to a broken toe of fate. Lightnin’ can’t kill the blues, no, not tonight. Magic Slim, John Lee Hooker—Boom Boom—my baby gives me the blues, but I love her so, I ride the storm for her sake. I’m the boss man, I strut in the smoke, but the broken down blues have me today, tethered to a chair of memories. Home away from home, cold blues wrapping around the ribs, a piano’s blues’s lament leaning into the night, a voice that won’t quit even when the dawn tries to pry it loose. So I play for a crowd that never quite sees through the whiskey, I sing for a memory that keeps walking beside me, a silhouette against the lonesome road and rain. I am the pulse in the floorboards, the sigh between chords, the echo that refuses to forget where I’ve been is my weather—dusk-blue, stubborn, relentless. The blues—she’s a map and a warning, a chorus I wear like a badge. And yet I own it, I stride through the smoke with a smile that knows the pain but won’t surrender. The blues ain’t just where I’ve been; the blues are where I’m headed—home, even when the road stays cruel, home in the rhythm, home in the truth. Cold nights, hot riffs, the streetlamp’s halo stitching the night back together. I lift the mic, I lift my voice, and I tell you: I’m still here. I’m still breathing. The blues—my old friend, my stubborn mirror—says, keep walking, boss man. And so I do, one note at a time, until the room agrees: the blues aren’t leaving. They’re becoming me."
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