Where the Devil Don't Stay

My Daddy played poker on a stump in the woods back in his younger days Prohibition was the talk, but the rich folks walked to the woods where my Daddy stayed Jugs and jars from shiners, these old boys here, they ain't miners They came from the twenty-niners It didn't take a hole in the ground to put the bottom in their face Back in the thirties when the dust bowl dried And the woods in Alabama didn't see no light My Daddy played poker by a hard wood fire Squeezing all his luck from a hot copper wire Scrap like a wildcat fights till the end Trap a wildcat and take his skin Deal from the bottom, put the ace in the hole One hand on the jug but you never do know Son come running You better come quick This rotgut moonshine is making me sick Your Mama called the law and they're gonna take me away Down so far even the Devil won't stay Where I call to the Lord with all my soul I can hear him rattling the chains on the door He couldn't get in I could see he tried Through the shadows of the cage around the forty watt light Daddy tell me another story Tell me about the lows and the highs Tell me how to tell the difference between what they tell me is the truth or a lie Tell me why the ones who have so much make the ones who don't go mad With the same skin stretched over their white bones and the same jug in their hand My Daddy played poker on a stump in the woods back when the world was gray Before black and white went and chose up sides and gave a little bit of both their way The only blood that's any cleaner is the blood that's blue or greener Without either you just get meaner and the blood you gave gives you away