Cowboy Confessional

Copyright 2006, Guy Smith, All Rights Reserved

Cain done in his brother, but he should’a killed his dad
Slayed good ‘ol Abel ’cause Abel was so God damn bad
Banished with a wink to Nod, Eve cried for his sins
Yeah, Cain done wrong but he should’a just done his old man in

Should’a killed his daddy, nailed Eve to the cross
Sacrifice the old son of a bitch, tell Adam who’s boss

Where was Joeseph when Jesus dangled on a stick
Mary made it to the play, but Joe phoned in sick
Absentee dad let his boy piss off authority
Yeah, Jesus should’a nailed old Joseph to a tree

Should’a killed his step dad, made him tote that heavy cross
Do in mother Mary’s man, show him God’s still boss

San Diego bound, track him down, bullet to his brain
Let paternal rocks of ages echo patricidal refrains
Oh mama, oh mama, don’t ya weep for me
Your rotten apple is goin’ right back up the tree

My old man ain’t no saint, maybe the devil in disguise
Exterminate that reprobate, send hell a huge surprise

---

The story: Better tell this story quick before someone thinks I’m completely psychotic.

I have a buddy — Dave — who is an independent film producer (or “money dispensing machine” as he prefers to describe himself and the process of making films). He has been slaving away on a script about a criminally insane young man, with a God/Mary/Mother complex, who is traveling down to San Diego to kill his father. We will not assume bad things about Dave just because his father lives in San Diego … and that he despises the old man … and that Dave has occasional delusions … let’s just drop it, OK?

Anyway, he had been telling me about the script, which has very disturbing religious overtones throughout, in part as a plot devise and in part because Dave knows such things will send Pat Robertson into spasmodic fits of pious indignation.

So Dave asked me to write a song or two for the movie. Problem was I have a great relationship with my Dad, and the thought of killing him is so vastly remote as to be beyond reality. I had no raw emotional material with which to work. So I was stuck.

Until I thought about the religious aspects of the film’s plot.

I started thumbing through bibles searching for good stories about bad father and son relationships, and discovered most of them involved dads killing their boys. You would figure that after several thousand years of Abrahamic theology we would have one decent story about a boy killing his dad.

Nope, no cigar Mr. Clinton.

But man, there were some episodes where biblical boys capping their papas would have resulted in jury acquittal under the mandate of meritorious homicide. So this song is dedicated to all the young men of scripture who God sought to kill by proxy … and how it might have otherwise turned out.