Ghost Town
There’s money to be made
It’s lying on the ground
Futures found and lost
In this mining town
The river’s running low
I pan for gold all day
Gambling all night
The Devil has his say
Chorus:
I came out west to make my fortune
Violent men with checkered pasts
Jumping claims with wild abandon
Knowing that each day could be my last
Sparking all the gals
In the town hotel
The Whiskey Priest he winks
I’ll see him down in hell
Bridge:
All these miles behind me now
Just tryin’ to survive
Memories of loved ones gone
Their spirits, never die.
Many men have come and gone
Chasing all their dreams
No guarantee they’d find them at all
And in death, they’re finally free.
When the gold played out
There’s none left to be found
Graveyards of the west
Like this old Ghost town.
Graveyards of the west
Like this old Ghost town.
This song came out of nowhere, and bumped ahead of several others that I was working on. I heard a melody and the progression came quickly. For several years I’ve thought of writing songs for an album that would be about Colorado Ghost Towns. This was influenced by Kate Willyard’s song, Dirty Annie, which was on the “Come Back To Colorado” album. The first iteration of this song didn’t have a bridge, but after working on it I added a bridge, a longer bridge that I usually write. I was worried that the bridge progression was too close to the chorus progression, so we changed it to “cut time” and I changed my bridge melody just a little. I capo this to the 7th fret, and play it in Bm. The chord progression works best using the forms of Em, D, G. The capo keeps those forms intact. In the studio Fred used his effects pedal with his Gibson ES-330. I kept my “scratch vocals” on this, so it’s “studio live”.
