Maybe you collect or maybe you pay
Still got to work that eight-hour day
Whether you like that job or not
Keep it on ice while you’re
Lining up your long shot1
Which is to say
hey-ey
Chorus:
Keep your day job
Don’t give it away
Keep your day job
Whatever they say
Ring that bell for whatever it’s worth
When Monday comes don’t forget about work
By now you know that the face on your dollar
Got a thumb to its nose and a
Hand on your collar
Which is to say
hey-ey
(Chorus)
Punch that time card
Check that clock
When Monday comes
You gotta run, run, run
Not walk
(Chorus)
Steady, boy, study that eight-day hour
But don’t underrate that paycheck power
If you ask me, which I know you don’t,
I’d tell you to do what I know you won’t
Which is to say
Hey-ey
(Chorus)
Daddy may drive a V-8 ’Vette2
Mama may bathe in champagne yet
God bless the child with his own stash3
Nine to five and a place to crash
Which is to say . . .
Keep your day job
Don’t give it away
Keep your day job
Whatever they say
Keep your day job
Until your night job pays
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
From the pool/billiards argot. Compare line in “Here Comes Sunshine”: “Line up a long shot. . . .”
The first two years of production of the Chevrolet Corvette, beginning in 1953, resulted in a beautiful car but one without sufficient power. According to James Schefter:
Zora Arkus-Duntov fixed it. . . . He immediately put a V-8 into 1955 Corvettes. Only seven hundred cars were built in 1955, but they sold. Arkus-Duntov went on to become Corvette’s first chief engineer.
The engine was a 210-horsepower machine, and the 1956 Corvette was the first American car to reach the 150-mile-per-hour mark at Daytona. The car had its trademark V-8 engine until 1990, when a V-6 model was introduced.
The horsepower of the Corvette’s V-8 engine ramped up gradually from the initial 195-horsepower machine, in 1955, until it peaked, in 1967, with the optional 435 horsepower engine.
Compare the Billie Holiday song “God Bless the Child” (A. Herzog Jr./Billie Holiday).
First performance: August 28, 1982, at the Oregon Country Fair Site, Veneta, Oregon (the second “Field Trip” with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters).
No studio recording.
Hunter, in his A Box of Rain, notes that “this song was dropped from the Grateful Dead repertoire at the request of fans. Seriously.”