Robert Johnson Lyrics

The words of an old Robert Johnson song filled the bar, You better come on in my kitchen, and the sweet sounds of an acoustic guitar accompanied them, ' cause it's gonna be rainin' outdoors.

In the dim light and smoke, the crowd had gotten quiet and all eyes turned to the stage. Seated on a plain hardbacked chair, the singer and his guitar were barely visible but the music came though clearly. He was wearing a worn out denim shirt, faded jeans and cowboy boots and his eyes were cast downward as he picked the old guitar. The other musicians on stage stood respectfully still. I reached for my camera and then thought better of it, preferring to close my eyes and lean my head back.

Such moments are rare in the dark, smoky bars where I spend so much of my time. The music is usually in a long competition with conversations and laughter and the sounds of drinks being served. Disputes can get loud and lengthy and eveyone shouts to be heard over everyone else. This night had been no different until Robert Johnson's lyrics had begun to drift out over the crowd. When a woman in trouble, everybody put her down. She look for a good man, but he can't be found. You better come on in my kitchen, cause it's gonna be rainin' outdoors.

The first time I ever heard a Robert Johnson had been over thirty years ago, sitting on a plastic tarp in the woods in Lincoln, Massachusetts in a raging thunderstorm. Taj Mahal was on stage, singing to over a thousand cold, wet and dedicated blues lovers who might, at any moment, be washed away by the torrential rain but who would never leave voluntarily. He sang one song - the one I was hearing in the bar - for over forty minutes while all around him people swept water off the stage, scurried to cover equipment with plastic and prayed that the tent top would hold. And it did. Despite the storm, it had been one of the best days of my life - Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, Bela Fleck, Michelle Shock - no one had cancelled and no one had left. We sat in water up to our ankles and ate fried chicken and potato salad and drank cheap wine out of paper cups and were transported by the music and Robert Johnson's lyrics. The sky never cleared that day and the rain never let up but nothing stopped the music.

I remembered that day and couldn't help but smile. Meanwhile, the song ended and there was a fraction of a second of dead silence before the bar erupted in applause. Robert Johnson Rules! someone shouted over the noise. Yeah, buddy.