Ray Wylie Hubbard - Purgatory Road lyrics

Mama come in from the kitchen
She tells me to fetch my brother
She wipes her hand on her apron
And says, "Don't be late for supper"

I walk out on the front porch
The sun's about to die
It's still so hot the old dogs wouldn't bark
Even if a car's to drive by

There's a blue-green Buick and a flat-black
Ford jacked up off the ground
Daddy's sittin' on a stump and he's lookin'
Bewildered at the parts lyin' all around
We ain't been no where at all
Since the Fairlane threw a rod
Whatever it is
Is bein' damned to hell by my daddy and God

Some are here workin' on a passage to Heaven
And others, they can't carry that load
A few are left singin' the
Blues on Purgatory Road

It's just a mile or so to the edge of town
There ain't much of one here now
Since the factories closed down
You got no jobs, you got no people
And you got no businesses
The only thing left is the
Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses

Mama she took me to church one time
Gon' get me baptized
Further on down the road
Somethin' I realized now you might say it's
Contempt prior to investigation
But nobody seems concerned about
Their savior's procrastination

Some are here workin' on a passage to Heaven
And others, they can't carry that load
A few are left singin' the
Blues on Purgatory Road

Now just past the cemetery
With it's tumped-over tombstones
There's a little tavern that's
Called the Devil's Backbone
It's got your distilled spirit's
And Tennessee sour mash
And a little sign that says "In God we trust
All others pay cash"

My brother's sittin' on a chair in
Front of an old tweed amplifier
He's playing bottle-neck slide, steel on wire
Now when his mother died and his daddy left
My momma she brought him home
And even though he wasn't blood
She raised him as her own
So now he sings them blues
On an old Gibson 160E
And he don't even know what color
He is 'cause he can't see

Some are here workin' on a passage to Heaven
And others, they can't carry that load
A few are left singin' the
Blues on Purgatory Road