Sometimes, I just need a lift and music always does it. Better than food or dessert or gifts. Music! Turn the sound up and listen. I gave you the lyrics too.

No matter how awful life seems to get, this is a song and video that manages to cheer me. Not an easy task these days.

When our car still had a CD play in it, we used to play this song over and over while we drove. Of course now, we don’t drive anywhere except town because the price of fuel has gone wacko. I don’t know if I’ll outlive all the craziness, but I have some small hope that I might outlive the gasoline prices. We do live in hope.

Since the last time I posted this — a few years ago — they have redone the video. I had been using the older video, but I was on You Tube for another clip and I saw it and got all kinds of sentimental about the song. This version is more elaborate with more set up — and many more people. There’s also a lot more Townes Van Zandt not only just “being there,” but also playing his music. The end with the country singers in the modern café drinking beer and laughing is new, too. They must have recut it right before Merle died (2016). It’s a better than average bit of video. Now I really want to see the movie! Anyone planning a “Pancho & Lefty” movie, made for television or otherwise? I keep hoping.

Pancho and Lefty

Written by Townes Van Zandt

Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard

Living on the road my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean
And now you wear your skin like iron
And your breath as hard as kerosene.

Weren’t your mama’s only boy
But her favorite one it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye
And sank into your dreams.

Pancho was a bandit boy
His horse was fast as polished steel
He wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel.

Pancho met his match you know
On the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dying words
Ah but that’s the way it goes.

All the Federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him slip away
Out of kindness, I suppose.

Lefty, he can’t sing the blues
All night long like he used to
The dust that Pancho bit down south
Ended up in Lefty’s mouth.

The day they laid poor Pancho low
Lefty split for Ohio
Where he got the bread to go
There ain’t nobody knows.

All the Federales say
They could have had him any day
We only let him slip away
Out of kindness, I suppose.

The poets tell how Pancho fell
And Lefty’s living in cheap hotels
The desert’s quiet, Cleveland’s cold
And so the story ends we’re told.

Pancho needs your prayers it’s true
But save a few for Lefty too
He only did what he had to do
And now he’s growing old.

All the Federales say
We could have had him any day
We only let him go so long
Out of kindness, I suppose

A few gray Federales say
We could have had him any day
We only let him go so long
Out of kindness, I suppose

Source: LyricFind

Songwriter: Townes Van Zandt

Pancho and Lefty lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing

Categories: Anecdote, Music, Video, You Tube

Tags: Marilyn Armstrong, Music, music video