I found myself far from home
In a little town with a busy road
I walked into a busier place
For cigarettes and a friendly face
I met a man selling his rags,
He said, “How ya doin?” I said, “Not too bad”
We got to chattin’ about his life,
About the woman he lost, the one he held too tight
I said, “I got lots of time and I’m not from here,
But I’m down for a beer and I’ll lend an ear”
Then on the highway doing 85,
He seemed so sad, but I felt alive
Before long he put a pipe in my hand
And said, “Your’e gonna want that before you see the band”
Outside the bar was a painted bridge,
The skyline of Dayton, and the poor and the rich
Inside the doors
The sound was clear,
The band was proud,
But the crowd was fair
It took a while
But I finally saw
What I came to see
And then I saw it all
CHORUS:
I saw an old man on the dance-floor with a girl
He was four times her age, but he showed her all his moves
Ain’t he cool, Cowboy Vai the Dancing Fool?
It’s been so long since he left school
Vai was a tiny man,
But he grabbed each girl and took ’em by the hand
He spun ’em round the room for while,
And he kicked up his boots with a big ol’ smile
His hair was white and his shirt was red,
His Wranglers were pressed and he was far from dead
I got to wondering why a man like him
Would dance in here with all the places he’d been
Then I realized and began to see
He was still living life, he was still living free
But the man who lost his woman before,
The one who bought my beer, couldn’t take any more
He started laughing at Vai, making fun of the one
Who was doing what it takes to not be alone
I said, “I ain’t got time for a man like you.
I’d rather be with Vai, the Dancing Fool
Recorded by Running With Sally
The First Sally, 2000
HapiSkratch Records
Written by : Trevor A. Clendenin
Trevor A. Clendenin is an African-American writer and lifelong musician whose work blends lived experience with a clear-eyed, literary sensibility. Raised in a military family and shaped by years spent in Boulder, St. Croix, and on the road, he’s moved through the worlds of jam bands, digital media, and small-town creative communities with the same curiosity that drives his fiction. His debut novel, Zuvuya, draws on decades spent in America’s improvisational music orbit, where transcendence, failure, ambition, and myth often collide.
Before turning to creative writing, Trevor earned a BA in Philosophy from Rollins College, a Master in Visual Media from IE in Madrid, served in the Peace Corps in Jamaica, worked as the Director of New Media for a PBS affiliate in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and later co-founded a digital marketing agency. He has played guitar in bars, basements, festivals, and renegade fireside jams across the country, and still believes that music communities are one of the last places where people strive for truth.
He lives in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife and daughter, and is at work on new fiction and essays about aspiration, identity, and the strange pilgrimage of American life.
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