If I Were You

Andy Whitman on Music

I’ve been listening to Chris Knight’s The Trailer Tapes pretty much non-stop all day. Knight’s a great, gravel-voiced folk rocker with a twang, Bob Dylan with a Stetson, but unlike Dylan he’s considerably more plainspoken, if no less intense. He’s got four good alt-country/rock albums that are well worth your time, but these trailer tapes (yep, recorded in the living room of his single-wide in Slaughter, Kentucky) are something else again, raw and plaintive and stripped down to the bare essentials, including the lyrics. It’s just Chris, his acoustic guitar, and his piercing words. Here are some of them:

If I were you
I would gladly loan to me
A dollar or two
So I could eat yeah and maybe
Get just one good night of sleep
But I’m not
And I’m stranded like a castaway in this town
And you seem so unwilling to help a fellow
When he’s down

If I were you
Thats what I’d do

If I were you
I wouldnt be out on these streets
The whole night through
Yeah I’d have a job
And a pretty wife that
I could come home to
But I don’t
And I have twenty cents left to my name
And you’re the only one left here
That I have to blame

If I were you
Thats what I’d do

Sir it’s not my way
To take from you
The things I haven’t earned
Wish I could go back and heed
The lessons I have learned
But I can’t
So you gladly put your money
In this sack
Yes sir this thing is loaded
And I have the hammer back

If I were you
That’s what I’d do
If I were you
That’s what I’d do
-- Chris Knight, “If I Were You”

This song also appears on the CD sampler included in the May, 2007 issue of Paste.