Tony Logue

Lyrics

Jesse

I was born in west Missouri a few years before the war
A brother and a sister I was the second born
Daddy was a preacher, A sharecropper on the side
He went west with the gold rush and he never came home alive

The unrest in Clay County weighed heavy on our mind
Missouri was a border state and we had to choose a side
So I slapped on a rifle barely old enough to kill
Signed on down at Wilson’s Creek with a boy named Bloody Bill

I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, But it felt like the only way
You’ve gotta make a stand, Gotta make for yourself a name

With a hatred for the union and a new found taste for blood
I hit my nineteenth birthday with a few slugs in my gut
The civil war had ended and it seemed to be a loss
But I’d earned myself a meanstreak and I damn sure had a cause
I signed on with some youngers and we started robbing trains
We started robbing county fairs and we started robbing banks
Was it revenge I wanted or was it just the fame
Was it some damn reckoning I reckon it's all the same

I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, But it felt like the only way
You’ve gotta make a stand, Gotta make for yourself a name

Now some call me a killer some call me a saint
Some call me a savior some call me a shame
A lowly desperado, A bandit on the run
My momma called me Jesse, The Lord just called me son