They’ve done this to families before us and all their skin was brown

trouble’s little and it’s lonesome.

You won’t find it on any map.

But you can take three steps in any direction,

And you’re there.

It’s a place to be born.

And it’s a place to die.

It’s a town called trouble,

And trouble.

Is a lonesome town.

Lord I’d like to leave this town.

Lord. I’d like to leave this town.

But I guess I’ll hang around.

trouble is a lonesome town.

trouble is where I was born.

trouble is a lonesome town.

trouble is where I was born.

yeah trouble is where I was borne.

Lee Hazelwood

from Trouble Is A Lonesome Town, 1964

We came to you Austin, writers, artists, musicians and bards, broke and yearning to be recognized for our developing promise.

Some of us pop, become local talent, the lucky ones go on to national stardom, but we stayed together, small people in big houses, we’ll buy a pair of snakeskin boots, get Joe Ely’s autograph, never set foot out of Austin and into Texas, Miss Kitty rocked my world, I followed her here, they said it could be done.

1989, there were big empty buildings in downtown Austin, you had to run for cover, windows blowin out, the boom went bust, artists rose up, poor but proud, made our way, shit jobs, throwin muses, learning Spanish, galleries everywhere, reflecting on the beauty in fifty cent hot sauce, bonding with bandboys, we felt sorry for Winston and Julia and it went without saying that we knew who they were, aware, naïve, we toiled at upholding an honorable tradition,

night and day

we produced like old-school bohemians, we wouldn’t

admit it but I’m saying it’s true, we spoke and worked like

old-school high-brow

otherworldly bohemians.

Now we are nothing but a cheap labor pool, swimming with sharks, nine-dollar-an-hour school bus drivers belching black filth. Texas did this to many others before us and all their skin was

colored brown.

No way Jose, I am a Native American Citizen or somethin like that.

Nah, who cares, my haven tribal community fragmented, gimme a break, dotcom patron, let me have my shameful

one by one inch box, Austin/Houston, what’s the difference,

unaffordable housing, starbucksification, City of Latte, no choice now but to live on credit, you know how it works, credit lasts til credit runs out, only thing you don’t know is how you’re gonna pay the bills.

Countercultural capitalists don’t expect you to pay the bills.

How could they? Can anyone pay off his credit card debt?

The monied simply take what they can then penalize you for

all you leave behind,

but they are ambivalent too,

what they are participating in is not merely wrong, it is deeply

depraved, it bugs them, sure, but not enough to quit bleeding you dry, unlike people they need to sleep nights, which makes it your fault, ya lousy bum, if you woulda paid your bills in the first place none of this would have had to happen.

Unlike you they get to sleep nights (unless four month old Dylan has the colic again).

Let the boys all sing let the boys all shout for my underground railway who believed in the gut that

love

of money is the root of all evil and the best things in life aren’t things, I’d tell all this to the electric company but it’s pitch black in here and I can’t find my phone. Ah, there it is.

Whoops, disconnected.

Home.