dave alvin
blue wing
He had a blue wing tattooed on his shoulder Well, it might have been a bluebird, I don't know but he'd get stone drunk and talk about Alaska The salmon boats and 45 below Well, he got that blue wing up in Walla Walla and his cellmate there was a Little Willy John and Willie, he was once a great blues singer so Wing & Willie wrote him up a song  (CHORUS) They sang, it's dark in here, can't see the light but I look at this blue wing when I close my eyes and I fly away, beyond these walls up above the clouds, where the rain don't fall on a poor man's dreams They paroled blue wing in August of 1963 He moved north, picking apples in the town of Wenatchee And then winter finally caught him in a rundown trailer park on the south side of Seattle where the days grow grey and dark And he drank and he dreamt a vision of when the seven still ran free and his father's fathers crossed that wide old Bering sea and the land belonged to everyone, and there were old songs yet to sing now, it's broken down to a cheap hotel and a tattooed prison wing Now, it's dark in here... (repeat chorus) Well, he drank his way to L.A., and that's where he died and no one knew his Christian name, and there was no one there to cry but I dreamt there was a funeral; a preacher and a cheap pine box and halfway through the sermon blue wing began to talk He said, it's dark in here... (repeat chorus)