Mac
The Watcher is another one of those completed musical pieces that showed up in my inbox from Brad. Musically, I think it speaks to our shared appreciation of Steely Dan and so I tried to fashion some lyrics that would be somewhat reminiscent of a dark Donald Fagan story.
Brad
I wrote this with the intention of creating a pastiche of 70s T.V. crime show music. Think Mannix, Barnaby Jones, Columbo, you get the idea. Mac then set the scene with a story about a ring of drug dealers “lamming” it in a hideout near the border. Unbeknownst to them the character from the next song (The Gumshoe) is watching their every move.
Something just ain’t right I can feel it in my bones
Dump the weight and split what you can save
Turn out the lights and stay off of the phones
Could be we got too greedy Might’a got a bit too brave
Just as I feared these walls have ears. don’t no one make a sound
We stayed a day too long
on the wrong side of this broke down border town
That cat back in the alley I thought he was with you
But he disappeared when Donny rolled on up
I couldn’t make his face Who wears sunglasses at night?
Who wears a three piece in the middle of July?
I kept the motor runnin’ I’ll bring the ride around
We stayed a day too long
On the wrong side of this broke down border town
The roads are blocked the power’s out there’s someone on the roof
Looks like this stinking shack is where we make our stand
The irony’s just killing me We handed them the proof
We would’a just touched down buyin’ rounds
If we’d just stuck to the plan
Brothers been good to know ‘ya But no one’s backing down
We stayed a day too long
On the wrong side of this broke down border town
Fifteen years ago today returning to the scene
I gotta say I’d play it just the same
See back then I had a family It was just business as they say
Ten years to life in Lockhart or trade it for a name
They pushed the place right over
And burned it to the ground
They stayed a day too long
On the wrong side of this broke down border town