Brian Kennedy - vocals, guitar
Andrew Hunt - fiddle, mandolin, backing vocals
Jonathan Hunt - upright bass, backing vocals
From the album Mighty Deeds, recorded Nov. 2021/Jan. 2022 at the Double Stop Fiddle Shop in Guthrie, Oklahoma
At a bar in Austin, a visiting Englishman, young, excitable, with a posh accent, somewhat drunk. He’s in Texas for a prizefight, part of the entourage of a friend who’s boxing that week in San Antonio. He loves America. He wants to live in America. He wants the bartender, Sarah, to marry him, and can’t understand why she isn’t interested. He turns instead to the man sitting next to him, enthusiastic:
“Out on the town, come on! Me and you, man, snortin’ lines of cocaine!”
He talks about his family, about his father standing over his bed every morning to wake him, afraid his son won’t go to work. He talks about his auntie sticking a stiletto heel in someone’s eye. He talks about a cousin in Corpus Christi. The cousin is on his third DUI.
He hates the English. Whether someone offers Churchill or Shakespeare, or even Mick Jagger, his answer is the same: “Fuckin’ scumbag!” He hates the English because his family is Irish, but he has a posh accent and can’t understand what happened. He got lucky somehow.
“Some parts of London,” he says, “seem like New Delhi to me. But I figure it’s fair play. Turnaround for the Empire.”
Later that night, Sarah reports - beautiful Sarah with her empty eyes - another man comes into the bar and threatens the Englishman’s life. They seem to know one another. They seem to have been friends, at one point.
Soon afterward, the Englishman leaves. He takes a taxi all the way to Corpus Christi, two hundred miles away.
Tea for Texas