The Calhoon Brothers live version below must have been recorded not long after we started doing it because it doesn't have any harmony. We never rehearsed. We played every night so we would just pick a slow part of the night and try out new songs. Harmonies and little nuances -- if you can call anything we played as "nuanced" -- were added later as we learned the song better.
Most of my bands were three-piece groups: guitar, bass guitar and drums. If you can play guitar like Eric Clapton, or can get a fat tone like ZZ Top, you can get away with playing single string licks all night long. But I always felt compelled to play chords at least 80% of the time and only do short solos or riffs between vocal phrases. The few times in my life I had the luxury of picking guitar on top of a solid rhythm section were wonderful but never lasted. The reality was, with three guys, the money was good enough to live on without getting a day job. With four, sometimes you had to get a day job. The idea of having five or more in a band never occurred to me. It didn't make financial sense.
Written: Melendres Street, Las Cruces NM, 1976
Knees heard a line in
“Viva Max!”, a Peter Ustinov film about the Alamo and someone called “Alamo
Rose” and thought it’d make a good song title. There was already a song about
Rose from San Antone, but not one about Rose from the Alamo. The words and
melody just seem to write themselves.
There were hard times
for us all
Back then in San Antone
But it seemed like we
always
Had enough for a drink
An it was right here in
this bar
Cross the street from
the Alamo
That I first met my
Rosie
Who taught me to think
About the changes that
we’d see
As the years rush on by
She said “We can stop
them
If you’ll just sit here
with me.
We’ll look out the
window
At the beautiful Alamo
It never changes and
neither will we.”
Oh I used to call her
my Alamo Rosie
I’ll always remember
the way that she would say
“I’ve been here forever
and I’ll be here tomorrow
Break it to me gently
when it all blows away.”
I loved her more than
was good for a man
But it was love that
kept us young
As the years passed
like days
I was holding her hand
with tears in my eyes
The night she saw the
Alamo crumble away.
Oh I used to call her
my Alamo Rosie
I’ll always remember
the way that she would say
“I’ve been here forever
and I’ll be here tomorrow
Break it to me gently
when it all blows away.”
I broke it to her gently
when it all blew away.
Wroutoid
The CALHOON BROTHERS LIVE VERSION
(Sometime in the late 70s at the Las Cruces Inn, Las Cruces NM)
