| Bill Gable

Track

While I was working on Shovel Of Dirt, I got to be friends with an old-timer down in Meredosia, Illinois. There’s a bar there right next to the Illinois River called The Approach where we drank beer and ate deep-fried buffalo carp. During the 1993 floods he told me the whole area anywhere near the river was under water. I imagined myself wasting away in a forlorn place like that, when I wrote “Row Of Empties.” There is very little to say about the song except that it was also obviously tongue-in-cheek, the first and last time anything resembling country music will no doubt ever come out of me.

Credits

Bill Gable -- all instruments

Lyrics

This last lonely bottle is my best friend
My savior and my salvation
Upstanding soldier, pride of the nation
Marching off to battle in single formation

Row of empties, row of empties
Merciful Jesus, I only want one
Lo and behold, look what God sent me
Shiver me timbers, thy will be done

Now the scars on my wrists have at last grown numb
Women don’t want you to love them
All they believe in is blind devotion
They’ll drag you through through the depths of their infinite oceans

Row of empties, row of empties
Where once there were many, now there are none
Blood of the lamb, my baby left me
Waste not, want no, thy will be done

Seems like bad luck been my best friend
So long since good luck I can’t even remember

So call 911 if I should stop breathing
But wake me when it’s last call
The longer I sit here the better I’m feeling
one more martini won’t phase me at all

Row of empties, row of empties
Merciful Jesus, I only want one
Lo and behold, look what God sent me
Luck of the Irish, thy will be done

Row Of Empties (unreleased rough)

Row Of Empties.mp3

Track