Running From the Devil (and Oklahoma)
Sometimes the devil doesn’t wear horns. Sometimes he wears a tie and tells you you’re “in the truth.”
I was twenty years old in Chickasha, Oklahoma — a wife, a baby, and a head full of confusion. The Jehovah’s Witnesses had a stranglehold on our lives and I was suffocating under someone else’s version of God. I asked my wife to leave with me, go back to Arizona, find some air. She said she was staying with the Truth.
So I parked the Mercury by the turnpike entrance, climbed the embankment, stuck out my thumb, and left. Left her, left the religion, left the ghost town that used to be my life. She had the Chevy and the Econoline. I had the clothes on my back and a direction — south, to go west.
I hitchhiked through Texas chasing a version of freedom I’d never actually seen. Dallas, then Lubbock, then fate winked from behind mirrored sunglasses — an off-duty Texas Ranger pulled over and said he was headed to Austin. “You like music?” he asked. “There’s a show tonight at the Armadillo.”
That night I watched John Prine play Sam Stone under the lights of a club that felt like church for the lost. Afterward we ended up outside together — me and John, sharing a smoke and a few words I don’t remember. I remember how he sounded. Like a man who’d seen things he wasn’t afraid to put in a song.
I started writing differently after that night. Not for anyone else’s truth. For mine.
Decades later that old ghost came calling in a song. Not about pitchforks and hellfire. About leaving behind what breaks you — even when you don’t know where you’re going next.
I’ve broken all my guitar strings searching for a pretty note. But I’m still running from the devil — dancing on the quarter notes.
Running From The Devil
I met a beautiful Texas lady at an all night rodeo
She was dancing in the corner with the devil on the quarter notes
Her eyes were full of laughter there was mirth in the back of her throat
When she said you look like you’re running from a woman in a petticoat
The morning sun would find me on the wrong side of the road
With my thumb in the air and a dry spot in my throat
I’ve broken all my guitar strings searching for a pretty note
As I’m running from the devil and I’m dancing on the quarter notes
Life’s got a way of dealing fate from the bottom of the deck
Love’s got a way of leaving marks ’round your heart and neck
I’ve broken all my guitar strings searching for a pretty note
As I’m running from the devil dancing on the quarter notes
There’s a perfect kind of freedom to a life that’s bumming around
But the cards won’t let you beat ‘em when your heart’s in another town
An wrinkled old Texas a ranger picked me up on side the road
He was driving in a Jeep eating green pistachios
All the way to Amarillo he was singing to the radio
He was driving like the devil tapping to the quarter notes
Life’s got a way of dealing fate from the bottom of the deck
Love’s got a way of leaving marks ’round your heart and neck
I’ve broken all my guitar strings searching for a pretty note
As I’m running from the devil dancing on the quarter notes
Yea I’m running from the devil dancing on the quarter notes
As I’m running from the devil dancing on the quarter notes
