[Verse 1]
Yeah, I play the Red River Valley
Sit in the kitchen and cry
Run fingers through seventy years of livin'
Wonder if every well he'd drilled gone dry
We was friends, me and this old man

[Refrain]
Desperados waiting for a train
Desperados waiting for a train

[Verse 2]
Soon as I could walk he'd take me with him
To a place called the Green Frog Café
There was old men with beer guts and dominos
Lying 'bout their lives while they played
And I was just a kid, they all called me Sidekick

[Refrain]
Desperados waiting for a train
Desperados waiting for a train

[Verse 3]
Yeah he's a drifter, he's a driller of oil wells
He's an old school man of the world
He taught me how to drive his car when he's too drunk to
He'd wink and give me money for the girls
And our lives was like some old Western movie
[Refrain]
Desperados waitin' for a train
Desperados waitin' for a train

[Verse 4]
One day I looked up, he's pushing eighty
Got brown tobacco stains all down his chin
To me he's one of the heroes of this country
So why's he all dressed up like them old men?
Just drinkin' beer and playin' Moon and Forty-Two

[Refrain]
Like a desperado waiting for a train
Like a desperado waiting for a train

[Verse 5]
The day before he died, I went to see him
I was grown and he was almost gone
We closed our eyes and we dreamed us up a kitchen
We played another verse of that old song
Yeah, Jack, you know, that son-of-a-bitch is comin'

[Refrain]
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train
Like desperados waiting for a train
Desperados waiting for a train
Desperados waiting for a train