Take the story of rat who's headed west
His buddy once told him he likes the girls there best
Centuries of singers, men who pay their rent
Waxing poetic of a woman's innocence

Rat was batshit and barely played a lick
He took to the highway high off headiness
He and his woman saw through an awful split
The road his only hope of falsifying it

Come on, come on, come on down
Come on, come on down
The wheels will turn your weary around

California calls him by his collar
His waves were ill behaved
So now he doesn't bother
Shook the country from him
Like a cub clawing its father
Couldn't buy compassion
'Cause it'd cost him 40 dollars

Only thing that's cheap
Seems to be his dreams
Even his defeat's
Costing him something

Bargain, bargain, bargain, bargain
Bargain, bargain, bargain

Rat was eating trash
Out of the back of someone's garden
What he wouldn't give to eat
Some grits to start his morning
Fascinated by the face of the woman who warms them

Rat has made his bath
And this is one he'll surely drown in
Imitating tales of cowboy trails
And travelling men
Hasn't satisfied a single one of his new women
The one he left alone is in their home
And busy hexin'

Come on, come on, come on home
Come on, come on home
At least she'll probably bury your bones

Country boys know better
Than to leave that weather
They know better
They know better

And a country boy knows
That wherever he goes
It'll show
It'll show
It'll show
It'll show

Oh, come on, come on, come on down
Come on, come on down
Bring our buddy rat back around

Take the story of rat who headed west
His brain hallucinating, his ego in his chest
His friends, they never told him
It'd cost him close to death
At home his woman carves another kind of casket
The kind he gladly climbs
And closes himself in