Million Dollar Highway

This week Sue regales us another tale of the West:

The Million Dollar Highway is a real place and it runs quite close to Angel Ridge in the Colorado mountains. The name is a declaration of desire both simple and direct: a road to the heart of the American dream. While this geographical certainty anchors the song firmly in the Americana tradition, its ideas are intended to be universal . 

Everyone has to travel the Million Dollar Highway, one way or another, like it or not. I started to think about what money means to me both before and after the crash: the fall that feels like a loss of innocence. I let the images gurgle away in my subconscious for a while and found that what came out drew heavily on bible stories, other songs in the bluegrass and gospel canon and mythologies of the wild wild west. I do not intend for this song to pass judgement but instead be an invitation to contemplate the complexities of our current situation in which most of us are complicit. To this end I took out all but the skeleton of a narrative, leaving images and characters to speak for themselves.  


Sue

It was a dead-eye day

When we all had to pay

The Devil’s costs

For getting us lost

On The Million Dollar Highway

And who did I see on that road with me

Burning up the dust

Going hell for bust

Like you can when you’re free?

Chorus

Hard times come to the Million Dollar Highway

You can lose your way on The Million Dollar Highway

Don’t ya sell your soul down The Million Dollar Highway.

He had fire in his eyes

And a belly full of lies

‘Don’t ya know who I am?’

‘I am The Lamb,

I am The Man in disguise.

Won’t ya catch a ride

Honey, come on climb inside

With your preacherman

Then we both can

Pass by on the other side'

Chorus

With his hand on the wheel

Of his automobile

He said ‘I am the light

And I know I’m right

You gotta have a heart of steel.’

And Preacher said he knew

Just what we had to do

He said ‘I think I’m gonna buy

Me a needle with an eye

I can drive on thru..

Instrumental ( chorus and half of verse)

I see angel bands

Holding out their hands

On the side of the road,

We never even slowed,

Rolling through The Badlands

Chorus

There’s the bankers and the conmen

The gamblers and the gunmen

The sad eyed soldiers

The paper folders

The mystics and the showmen

The slighted and the blind

The sorrowful of mind

All the working girls

With their stockings and their pearls

Rolling up behind

Chorus

Instrumental