OUTLAW BLUES

Hi,

I got up this morning and played Outlaw Blues at as loud a volume as I
thought reasonable for the people in the flat upstairs (they'll come
round to Bob. They seem like reasonable enough people. I'm going to try
them with the entire Fox Warfield residency again tonight).

Anyway. The song really got me fired up. This line struck me - in the
way that Dylan lines can sometimes lurk for years and then hit you
between the eyes like a freight train ...


"Don't ask me nothin' about nothin',
I just might tell you the truth."


I wondered if any of those hapless interviewers on the NDH documentary
had heard the song. That line seems like a creed. It feels so
essential to the mode in which Dylan has presented himself over the
years. 'A nobel truth is a sacred creed.' Indeed.

'There are things I could say, but I don't.'

'Your scarf it kept your mouth well hid'

'Why then don't you come out once and scream it?'

'Nothing was revealed.'

'You got my attention, go ahead, speak.'

'Last night the wind was wisperin' I was trying to make out what it
was.'

'Crickets talkin' back and forth in rhyme.'

'Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'



This stuff seems to be about how much you talk. How much you decide to
keep. Things said and left unsaid: things witheld.

It got me thinking... but I'm not going to tell you how or what about!

Mr Jinx



OUTLAW BLUES

Ain't it hard to stumble
And land in some funny lagoon?
Ain't it hard to stumble
And land in some muddy lagoon?
Especially when it's nine below zero
And three o'clock in the afternoon.

Ain't gonna hang no picture,
Ain't gonna hang no picture frame.
Ain't gonna hang no picture,
Ain't gonna hang no pi'cture frame.
Well, I might look like Robert Ford
But I feel just like a Jesse James.

Well, I wish I was on some
Australian mountain range.
Oh, I wish I was on some
Australian mountain range.
I got no reason to be there, but I
Imagine it would be some kind of change.

I got my dark sunglasses,
I got for good luck my black tooth.
I got my dark sunglasses,
I'm carryin' for good luck my black tooth.
Don't ask me nothin' about nothin',
I just might tell you the truth.

I got a woman in Jackson,
I ain't gonna say her name.
I got a woman in Jackson,
I ain't gonna say her name.
She's a brown-skin woman,
but I
Love her just the same.

.

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