Todd Snider – Ballad Of The Devils Backbone Tavern (Guitar Intro Tab)

N.C. (Speaking) I come from, uh, Oregon I probably told some of you that before, that's where I come from And when I got out of school there by a thread, I went I got this ride down to Santa Rosa, California and that didn't work out at all So I called my brother, he was livin' in Austin He had these friends that were lettin' him stay on their couch You know, I figured they might have a couch that I could stay on So I got this ride to Austin, Texas and Got to this address my brother, uh, gave me And this guy introduced himself as Bonehead And, uh, I went in and started askin' around Turned out they didn't have the second couch They just had the one couch, uh, for my brother But they knew, they knew where there was a party And I thought, well, that's good enough, so, uh We all got in this car and we drove across town to this party Where all these people were standin' around, drinkin' And there was this guy in the corner of the party His name was Trog And he was six-foot-eight, three hundred pound guy And he had a beer in each hand and he was tellin' stories And people would gather around him and laugh And they weren't really funny stories But he's six-eight, three hundred pounds, so I went over there and started laughin' too, you know And then, uh, towards the end of the party when everybody drizzled out a little bit, uh I got to talkin' with Trog, turned out him and his friends They, they did have an extra couch that somebody could stay on So I went over to their house and stayed for like three months, you know And we would, uh, most of the time, at night We would sit around and listen to whatever Trog said we were gonna listen to on the radio, you know Drink beer, whatever One night, we were sittin' there listenin', and uh He put on this CD of this guy I'd never heard By Jerry Jeff Walker, who you might've heard of, yeah If you haven't ever heard of him, his main thing people know him for is the song "Mr. Bojangles" But he's got a ton of great songs And, uh, I'd never heard that kind of music before And I got so excited, I told my friend, I said "This is it for me, you know?" He said, "Well, he's playin' at this place called Gruene Hall" So that friday night, me and Trog got in his truck And we drove down to Gruene Hall to see Jerry Jeff And he come out kinda like tonight, like I am With just a guitar and sang some songs I thought, "Shit, I could do that," so So I went and got myself a guitar, you know And I started practicin' and a few months later, I, I was singin' And, uh, uh, I feel like I got all the Jerry Jeff Walker records that there are, got every single one If you're like me, when you get a record I like to read the inside, the notes and stuff inside So I was readin' in some of his Jerry Jeff Walker records And turns out he records most of his stuff in this little town Not really a studio, but a little town called Luckenbach, Texas That you might remember from that song Willie and Waylon and The Boys, and "Luckenbach, Texas" The town itself is actually a beer hall, a post office, a house A parkin' meter and that's the whole fuckin' thing And Jerry Jeff loved to hang out there and he had become my hero And they had music on Fridays and Saturdays so I wanted to play there So I sent my tape over there and tried to get 'em to call me They never did call me and then one night, we were sittin' around Watchin' whatever Trog wanted to watch on TV, you know And the phone rings and this woman says "Hey, this is Large Marge from down in Luckenbach And our show on Saturday canceled and we was wonderin' if you could come fill in" And I got exc—, 'cause I've been six or seven months tryin' to get this show So I was so excited, my heart's beatin' I held the phone, checked with Trog, he said it was okay if we took the gig And that weekend, we all got, we all got in this old four-hundred-and-fity dollar car that I had And we started drivin' down the highway towards Luckenbach, Texas And friends and neighbors, if you've never been to Luckenbach, Texas You may never fuckin' go 'cause Tourists take the signs that point to it to keep in the garage and stuff So you get out in the desert and there's no signs And of course it was just me and all my friends, it's all guys in the car So we drove 'bout another two and a half hours 'fore we ever Pulled over and asked anybody where we was And we, we were on this thing called The Devil's Backbone Highway, right So we finally pull into this place uniquely named The Devil's Backbone Tavern And we go in, and all the guys say I gotta go in, you know So I go in and it's like one of them bars like everyone's drinkin' beer And there's like, say twenty people in there And they have maybe, say seventeen teeth total in the whole place And I'm not a good fighter or very good at protectin' myself at all, you know So I thought, this could, this may not work out, and um So I saw behind the bar, there was this one older woman She looked like she was in her eighties and she hun—, kinda hunched over like I remember my grandma started to do. She kinda had, she had curly white hair and she's all I thought, "Well, I could take her," so I went over, over there I go up to her, I says, "Ma'am, we're tryin' to find Luckenbach and we're so lost" And I swear this is true, she turned around really slow I'll never forget it, she turned around really slow and she Looked up at me and she kinda smiled, she says "Fuck Luckenbach, drink with us" So we did And at the, uh, end of the night, you know We had got our guitars out and we were singin' and everything and drank a whole bunch of beer And I went up to her, they called her Miss Virgie So I said, "Miss Virgie, how much do we owe you for the beer?" And she says, "You don't owe me nothin', boy" So we started, after that, every Friday after that We would go down and sing for her, you know By the end of the summer, I had gotten to know her and I made this song up Miss Virgie, wherever she is tonight, I don't know, but I play this for her It features the hottest guitar work that I could do [Intro]

 C    C/B      A                  D         G      C
                                                   Not this part

 C             C7                 F                D7
               Thank you

C C/B A D G C [Verse]

C        C/B   A               D         G      C
Old Miss Virgy tended bar at a shack out in the hills

C     C/B         A                D7                    G
Never made her no money boy but it paid up of all of her bills 

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She must have been 80 years old but her heart was warm and her beer was cold

          C    C/B                A          D       G       C
And she'd give away more than she ever sold, smiling all the time

[Verse]

          C    C/B        A      D     G      C
I used to sing off in the corner every Friday night

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To a loud crowd of cowboys, bikers and bar room fights

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They were drinking beer, carrying on, not a one of 'em was listening to one of my songs

    C        C/B       A                           D        G      C
But old Miss Virgy was singing along, she said she knew 'em all by heart

[Verse]

         C   C/B         A           D      G    C
And then one night after closing she poured me a beer

              C            C/B          A                           D7                      G
And she said "Come on over here and sit down you little shit, I got something you oughta to hear"

          C               C7               F                             D7
She said "Life isn't easy getting through, everybody's gonna make things tough on you

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But I can tell you right now if you dig what you do, they will never get you down"

[Chorus]

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She said life's too short to worry, she said life's too long to wait

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Well, it's too short not to love everybody, life's too long to hate

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I meet a lot of men who haggle and finagle all the time, tryin' to save a nickel maybe make a dime

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She said, "Not me boy no sireee, you know I ain't got the time."

[Instrumental] C C/B A D G C C C/B A D7 G *ping* C C7 F D7 C C/B A D G C [Verse]

    C       C/B      A                              D      G        C
Now I ain't seen Ol' Virgy I guess it's prolly been almost eighteen years.

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Been bumming around this country singing my songs for tips and beers

        C                        C7                F                         D7
Now the nights are long, and the travelin's tough, hotels are weird, and the pay sucks

    C       C/B        A                D          G       C
But I can't dig what I do enough, so it never ever gets me down

[Chorus]

      C          C/B      A             D          G       C
I say life's too short to worry, I say, life's too long to wait

           C   C/B          A               D7                 G
Well, it's too short not to love everybody, life's too long to hate

         C                           C7                  F                             D7
I meet a lot of men who haggle and finagle all the time, trying to save a nickel maybe make a dime

           C   C/B     A          D       G       C
She said, "Not me boy, no sireee, I ain't got the time."  Yeehoo

[Instrumental] (repeat while speaking) C C/B A D G C C C/B A D7 G *ping* C C7 F D7 C C/B A D G C [Outro] (repeat verse chords) I told you I played there every Friday night for the rest of the summer. There was this one guy who used to sit in the corner every Friday night and listen to me play. He's sit over there drinking beer, hogging like 3 or 4 teeth all to himself. One night at the end of the summer he come up to me, we'd hadn't talked the whole summer, you know. And he comes up to me and says, "Boy... I been watching you." And I remember I said, "I've noticed that and I wanted to thank you I just.." And he said, "Oh don't thank me son...I think you SUCK." And I understood what he meant when he said I sucked...but he wanted to go on and on about it. So he did. He said that he and his brothers were big fans of Eddie Van Halen and the Eddie Van Halen band. He said, "Last summer we drove into Austin to see Eddie Van Halen and the Eddie Van Halen band." The whole damn concert Eddie V was on the top of his jar... whodaloo whodaloo whodaloo He said, "You play the same three chords the whole fuckin night, it sucks" So when I come up with this song I thought of old Jerry Jeff of course, I thought of my buddy Trog... Willie, Waylon and the boys... Eddie Van Halen and the Eddie Van Halen band. But most of all I thought about that guy and his brothers. That's when I come up with this part. *ping* Eat your heart out you inbred sombitch.