I don't know why, but Knees never played this song with any of his bands. He was living in the basement of an old red schoolhouse outside of Durango CO on the road to Bayfield with his wife and brand new daughter. Sorry, fans, but the schoolhouse has been razed.
The only time it's ever been heard in public was at a book convention called Con Mysterioso in Austin in July of 2006. Jesse Sublett, Dennis McMillan and I put on a musical symposium about murder and music and I used the song as an example. Bill Crider was in the audience with his phone recorder and recorded the event. Later on he put a couple of videos up on YouTube which you can see below.
Written: Bayfield Highway, Durango CO, 1972
The big news in 1972 was the “no knock” law that allowed cops to break into your house without knocking if they thought you were doing something they didn’t like. Knees gave it a Neil Young flavor and a country voice and liked the fact that his revenge-crazed protagonist planned to off the seven DEA agents with a knife, instead of a ho-hum gun.
If you guys are interested
I’ll
tell you why I’m here
So far
from my home town
Seven of
em came
Without
a knock upon my door
It’s
amazin how they bring you down.
They tole me all my rights
But they
didn’t explain my wrongs
I done
everything that they said
But if I
had known
The
shape that I’m in now
I’d shot
everyone of them dead.
Just about a lid was all that I had
Underneath the the mattress of my bed
Then
they tole me “Kid,
You’re
gonna wind up bad
This
stuff will knock the brains out of your head.”
An they tole me they were doin me a favor
But I
lost my wife an a year of my life
An I’d
give anything for a knife
An a
chance to pay them back for their favor.
That’s about the size of it
I’ll
spend a year in jail
There
ain’t much more to tell
But
those seven men
For the
favor that they done
I’ll see
them all in hell.
Check out the videos that Bill Crider put on Facebook.
https://youtu.be/czyj4yhFAO4
https://youtu.be/9BKSSVyeJf4
Gamebird
