Album: Live at the Old Quarter (Houston, Texas)

Pancho And Lefty

by Townes Van Zandt

Living on the road my friend,
is gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron,
Your breath as hard as kerosene.
You weren't your mama's only boy,
but her favorite one it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye,
And sank into your dreams.


Pancho was a bandit boy,
his horse was fast as polished steel
He wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel.
Pancho met his match you know
on the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dying words,
ah but that's the way it goes.
All the Federales say
they could have had him any day
They only let him slip away
out of kindness, I suppose.


Lefty, he can't sing the blues
all night long like he used to.
The dust that Pancho bit down south
ended up in Lefty's mouth
The day they laid poor Pancho low,
Lefty split for Ohio
Where he got the bread to go,
there ain't nobody knows


The poets tell how Pancho fell,
and Lefty's living in cheap hotels
The desert's quiet, Cleveland's cold,
And so the story ends we're told
Pancho needs your prayers it's true,
but save a few for Lefty too
He only did what he had to do,
and now he's growing old