Well, I spend my tomcat nights in New Orleans
Always ’round this red moon time of year
Just let it go, and fall right off the deep end
’Cause you sure don’t look for soul salvation here
Bars and alleys are running wild with fat brass
And your three-piece bottled-up conventioneers
And your drag queens and your strip bars
And your hazy purple streetlights1
All steaming up the atmosphere
She always waits for me right down there in the lobby
A little shopworn but sure not the worst I’ve seen
And I nod across the way to Bon Temps Billy’s Black Water Lounge
And she nods back, ’cause we both know what that means
She follows me on in like we’re both strangers
’Cause I kind of can’t afford, y’all, to be seen
She’s got that far-off, smoky, leaves-are-falling look in her eyes
A true last-chance October Queen
And I know it’s gonna be one hell of an evening
Just like the year before, and the year before, and the year before
Still something about it, something about her
Something that always evades my memory
I don’t know what it is
There’s so little I recall, little I recall
So we small talk and drink our way through the motions
And then the lights dim for the big show up in my room
On a threadbare bed with feathers and scented lotions
Like some kind of carnival gin-soaked dream cartoon
Well I guess you can chalk up one more night up for the ages
And I wake up in a haze of sweat and cheap perfume
But she’s way long gone, way long gone at the cottonmouth sunrise
And I don’t know if it’s way too late or way too soon
Down the street, the hose wagon’s
Washing last night on down the storm drain
And I’m lying here and my head’s on fire and my body’s flat
Guess it’s gonna take a long hot shower or two to wash it away, wash it away
We just won’t talk about that
And I think about the life that I’ll go back to
And the congregation that pays my country club and rent
But at 1:55 Delta flight 648 gonna take off and fly
And I’ll have one more full year to repent
And I bet it was one hell of an evening
Just like the year before, and the year before, and the year before
Still there’s something about it, something about her
Something always evades my memory
I don’t know what it is
There’s so little I recall, little I recall
Something about, something about her
Something about, something about her
Something about, something about her
Something about, something about her
Words by Bob Weir and Andre Pesses
Music by Bob Weir and Ratdog
Evokes the Jimi Hendrix song “Purple Haze.”
Studio recording: Evening Moods (September 2000), Ratdog.
First performance by The Dead: June 24, 2003, at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey.
Andre Pessis has written lyrics for Huey Lewis (“Walking on a Thin Line”), Bonnie Raitt (“Slow Ride”), Journey, Mr. Big (coauthoring with Eric Martin), and Waylon Jennings. Pessis was vocalist for the 1960s band Circus (formerly Flying Circus), joining in 1969 after leaving New York, where he lived till then. Circus frequently played double bills with Huey Lewis’s band Clover. Bob Weir met Pessis through Mark Karan, of Ratdog.