Bit of a background to this one. I’m the lyricist here, and my old buddy Nick is the music man. I could never hope to play, sing, produce, or come up with music this good, so I’m kind of riding on Nick’s coat-tails. But I am pleased with the lyrics – I write stories and novels as well as songs and truth be told most of my songs are actually stories that didn’t quite carry enough weight to become fiction.
Anyway, I’ve played in bands on and off with Nick for 35 years. He’s a consummate musician, and has played bass professionally with some very fine bands, and I’m hoping that I might get him to accompany me on a few acoustic gigs sometime in the future. We had a jam a few weeks ago on some of the tunes I’ve shared here and it sounded just wonderful. I’m currently trying to persuade him to lay down some bass on the full revised version of Drag You Back which I’ll share here soon.
Meanwhile, I had these lyrics and whatever I did musically sounded a bit naff so I sent them to Nick and this is the result. He called in another of our long term bandmates to play the drums – himself a professional. So you can see, I really am punching above my weight here.
It’s pretty old, but I wanted to share it as my buddy Nick has been very ill recently and I think this deserves a few more listens. The vampires are, of course, not vampires, just the drinkers who spend the long dark hours in bars. But they can be real vampires if you want them to be.
The Vamp of Storyvillehttp://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=13335891Marietta throws her head back and begins to laugh
And all the vampires in Sweet Pierre’s begin to sweat
In all the bars, in all the towns they’ve ever been
They can’t recall such a smooth and tender neck
She licks her lips and the undead squirm
Lip gloss like Holy Water burns
They cross themselves and they stare through their bloodshot little eyes
The barman wipes a glass and cracks a joke
Marietta smiles, her mouth is full of smoke
Breathing fire into the hot New Orleans night
Leaning on a balustrade on a street where Louis Armstrong played
The Saints Came Marching In and Tiger Rag
A sailor in from Singapore stumbles through his last night on the shore
He’s acting out a savage dream that he once had
He picks up the scent of perfumed air
That draws him over to Sweet Pierre’s
And a girl that’s stalked his dreams all of his life
He’s got a sharpened razor in his coat
And is searching for a smooth and tender throat
As he breathes fire into the hot New Orleans night
Down in Storyville there’s a tale going still, the old folks tell
Of a blue eyed sailor with tattoos running across his back
He stole down Liberty and took away sweet Marie
They still keep a stool empty at the bar where she sat
Sweet young blood in the Mississippi mud
A body they couldn’t tell who
The vampires, they all brought their dreams and regrets
And stared down at her twisted neck
They could not believe, and they do not yet
And they breathe fire into the hot New Orleans night
