Tag: Dublin Blues

Guy Clark – Dublin Blues

I love the way Clark lets the details carry the emotion. His delivery gives the words time to register, and another little picture appears each time I listen. He makes this man’s memories feel familiar, even when they have nothing to do with my own.

Guy Clark was a master songwriter, and one thing I love about his songs is the imagery. He could describe something ordinary and make you see it. A bar, a cigarette, or a memory could tell you more about a person than a long explanation. Dublin Blues is a wonderful example. You can picture the man in this song, and you can feel how badly he wishes he were somewhere else.

Clark wrote the song himself and released it as the title track of his 1995 album. The narrator longs for a familiar bar in Austin while struggling with a love he cannot leave behind. He has pride, regrets, and things he wants forgiveness for. Clark gives us enough to understand his hurt while leaving room to wonder about the relationship. It feels like hearing one side of a conversation that has been going on for years.

One detail I especially like is how he puts seeing great works of art alongside hearing Doc Watson play. To my ears, Watson belongs right there with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. It tells you something about what this man values. He has experienced beautiful things, but those memories cannot settle what is troubling him now. That is a lot to get across in a few lines.

I love this story about writing the song. Clark brought the idea to Rodney Crowell, who declined to help. Crowell had been encouraging him to stop sharing songwriting credit when he was doing so much of the work himself. He wanted Clark to finish this one alone. Clark did, and Crowell later admitted that turning him down had not been one of his smartest decisions. I can understand the regret!

The Texas Chili Parlor is a real Austin establishment, and the margaritas came from Clark’s own experiences there with friends. He recalled that their inexpensive mezcal drinks were pretty awful. After the song became popular, he said a bartender complained that people were ordering them because of the song and then wanting refunds. Leave it to Guy Clark to make people nostalgic for a drink he didn’t even recommend.

Dublin Blues

I wished I was in Austin in the Chili Parlor Bar
Drinking Mad Dog Margaritas and not caring where you are
But here I sit in Dublin just rolling cigarettes
Holding back and choking back the shakes with every breath

So forgive me all my anger, forgive me all my faults
There’s no need to forgive me for thinking what I thought
I loved you from the get go, and I’ll love you ’til I die
I loved you on the Spanish Steps the day you said goodbye

I am just a poor boy, work’s my middle name
If money was a reason, well, I would not be the same
But I’ll stand up and be counted, I’ll face up to the truth
I’ll walk away from trouble, but I can’t walk away from you

So forgive me all my anger, forgive me all my faults
There’s no need to forgive me for thinking what I thought
I loved you from the get go, and I’ll love you ’til I die
I loved you on the Spanish Steps the day you said goodbye

I have been to Fort Worth, and I have been to Spain
I have been too proud to come in out of the rain

I have seen the David, I’ve seen the Mona Lisa too
I have heard Doc Watson play, “Columbus Stockade Blues”

So forgive me all my anger, forgive me all my faults
There’s no need to forgive me for thinking what I thought
I loved you from the get go, and I’ll love you ’til I die
I loved you on the Spanish Steps the day you said goodbye

Well I wished I was in Austin, hmm, in the Chili Parlor Bar
Drinking Mad Dog Margaritas and not caring where you are

Thank y’all very much
It’s Guy Clark
Thanks very much, I had a great time

Guy Clark – The Randall Knife

Finding Guy Clark in the past few years has been amazing. Song after song that I can relate to with words that always fit. I lost my dad in 2005, so I can totally relate to this song. I have some of his tools for making guitars and an old wooden case he made for them.  This song brought back a lot of memories. This song is a true story song in every sense of the word. I’m usually a little more hesitant on partial talking songs…but this one is a winner.

The song was on the album Dublin Blues, which was released in 1995. The musicians on this album were staggering. Rodney Crowell, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, Kathy Mattea, and more. This song closed the album, and that’s where it belongs because it would have been hard to follow this song. 

The song centers on a knife passed down from his father, a Randall Made Knives blade with history behind it. Clark doesn’t treat it like an object; it’s more like a stand-in for memory and loss. He talks about using it, holding it, and what it meant to his dad. By the end, the knife becomes a way of holding on to someone who’s gone.

The arrangement stays simple, and nothing pulls attention from the lyric. You can hear the same mindset in writers like Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle, where detail matters more than volume. Every line feels and is important.

It’s about one knife, one father, one set of memories. But it doesn’t stay there. Anyone who’s held on to something after losing someone will recognize it. Clark never says more than he needs to, and that’s the reason it holds up. 

The Randall Knife

My father had a Randall knifeMy mother gave it to himWhen he went off to World War IITo save us all from ruinNow if you’ve ever held a Randall knifeYou’ll know my father wellAnd if a better blade was ever madeIt was probably forged in hell

My father was a good manHe was a lawyer by his tradeAnd only once did I ever seeHim misuse the bladeWell, it almost cut his thumb offWhen he took it for a toolThe knife was made for darker thingsYou could not bend the rules

Well, he let me take it camping onceOn a Boy Scout jamboreeAnd I broke a half an inch offTrying to stick it in a treeWell, I hid it from him for a whileBut the knife and he were oneHe put it in his bottom drawerWithout a hard word one

There it slept and there it stayedFor 20 some odd yearsSort of like ExcaliburExcept waiting for a tear

My father died when I was 40And I couldn’t find a way to cryNot because I didn’t love himNot because he didn’t tryWell, I’d cried for every lesser thingWhiskey, pain and beautyBut he deserved a better tearAnd I was not quite ready

So we took his ashes out to seaAnd poured ’em off the sternAnd then threw the roses in the wakeOf everything we’d learnedAnd when we got back to the houseThey asked me what I wantedNot the law books, not the watchI need the things he’s haunted

My hand burned for the Randall knifeThere in the bottom drawerAnd I found a tear for my father’s lifeAnd all that it stood for