If it ain’t the truth, it ain’t the blues. That simple.
That’s one of the things I love most about the blues. You’d better be telling the truth. Our lives are filled with lies. We have to pretend these lies are the truth just to get through the day and keep our jobs.
Driving up to Woodstock last week, I heard Buddy Guy cover “Cheaper to Keep Her.”
You didn’t pay two dollars to bring the girl home
Now you’re about to pay two thousand to leave alone
See another woman out there, you wanna make a change
She ain’t gonna want you ’cause you won’t have a damn thing
Don’t know who wrote this one, but ain’t it the truth? Particularly in the arena of the relationship between the sexes, you can hear a whole lot of lies. But, it’s the job of the bluesman to tell the truth.
If you decide to roam
and leave your happy home
You gotta pay the house note
The child support, your insurance
Alimony, mortgage 1, mortgage 2
It’s cheaper to keep her
It’s cheaper to keep her
The Karaoke Queen often tells me that she knows so many nice young girls who can’t find a husband.
“The young men all seem to be afraid to make a commitment,” she says.
“No, men have just been talking to each other for the last 15 years,” I tell her. “We men may be stupid, but if you keep beating us upside the head, we eventually get the point. The girls want the status and security of marriage, but the minute they get pissed off, they run down to see the divorce attorney, and they take away everything you got… the house, the kids… everything.”
But, now, I’ve got to admit that I found the way around that. Dumb luck, really. I met Myrna, an old fashioned Filipina. In Woodstock and Manhattan, the liberal women think of marriage as a sort of long date. Not Myrna.
“The only way you’re leaving me,” she would say, “is in a hearse.”
It turned out to be the other way around. She’s buried with my ring on her finger. God bless you, honey. You were the truth.
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