Ain't nothing better than a yellow dog
This one followed a lanky lawyer home
Abe picked him up in ’55
Gave that labrador mutt a brand new life
There had been Joe and Honey running around before him
He was the last to play the role
Fido
When the family took a train to Washington
Fido stayed behind with the neighbor kids, Frank and John.
They took him back to that old house one more time
For the funeral in ’65
Pictures taken, strangers called his name and they plucked his hair for souvenirs
There goes Fido
I can’t help but wonder
If the President had a family dog living in the White House with him
Maybe Abe would have skipped that play to watch him chase his tail
In Springfield he was a monument
Until he met the same fate as his best friend
At the hand of a lunatic named Charlie Planck
This guy had a brain more rotten than the booze he drank
Fido jumped on the wrong man,
Planck had a knife in his hand, off into the great unknown
The farm out west where the green grass grows
Fido
Tom Heyman documents life in San Francisco circa 2023, refusing to succumb to easy characterization & instead capturing the city’s nuance. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 22, 2023
Tanya Donnelly, Wreckless Eric, Rosanne Cash, contribute cover versions of John Wesley Harding’s songs for this charitable compilation. Bandcamp New & Notable May 6, 2021