Song Description

Late Velvet Underground style midtempo story-song of immigrant labor in Southern California.

Lyrics

When I first saw this dust and these hills
These orange groves and these social ills
I kept to my family
As if I didn't notice
In my mind that fateful bottle speaks
There's a blank where there should be the next week
My legal status was too drear bleak
To collect unemployment

For 2 months I went underground
Stole every liquor bottle in this town
But in March I heard a sound
That pushed my heart open
I see that opening door and my son
My mother-in-law shot words as if from a gun
Across the room was a mirror
And I whistled a song

Each day I then would try my luck
To go to the groves piled in the back of a truck
Twice a week under the fence I would duck
And spend my day singing
Into my mind would flow forgotten words
I pictured myself as if among the birds
It was my great uncle's voice that I heard
Calling me from Sonora

Every night I'd bounce from bar to bar
On foot or in my neighbor's car.
I heard accordions playing
When I mixed beer and Tequila
And then one morning I woke by a wall
I heard my heart let fly a mourning call
My mind started to slip
And I pictured my wedding

I'm now fluent in the local tongue
My skin is leathered where it once was young
If I once had a song, it's been sung
By some other singer
In this Valley there's no rolling fields
Just pickup trucks with their hulking wheels
With tips I earn my family's meals
And my wife does nails

Last year I bought myself a car
I hold my keys and hear a gut guitar
It's as true as all these sounds from afar
That each day I'm dying
But when my wife takes me by my hand
This foreign body in this foreign land
My head becomes quiet
And I settle down