Much of Bob Wayne’s 2011 Century Media debut Outlaw Carnie was spent raising hell and firing off rowdy, braggadocio-filled country rockers culled from his previous self-released albums. But then, in the middle of the record, there’s this song.
Like much of Outlaw Carnie, fans of Wayne were already well familiar with “Blood to Dust,” but it’s one of only a couple of songs on the album that I like better than the original version. I always found the banjo on the verse of the original distracting, and this one strips it down to what it should be — Wayne, his guitar and plenty of grit.
Wayne drops the partying, brawling badass bit for a few minutes and gives listeners a peek behind the rough and ready exterior.
The song reminds me a lot of David Allan Coe’s “If That Ain’t Country,” with Wayne delivering scenes from his life in a spoken word style over a quiet guitar on the verse. The song then picks up the tempo a little for a chorus. The stories he tells are not always pretty — a father who left his family and then overdosed or Wayne’s own battles with drugs and alcohol. They’re not always dramatic or relevant: The story of his old rock band and what happened to everyone. But they connect with the listener, and they’re all tied up in a hopeful outlook.
Then there’s the chorus, which is deep and more than a little poetic: “They say some things in our lives are best forgotten. I say those are things that make us who we are, so be proud of what you’ve got and where you come from — ’cause from blood to dust, you know it ain’t very far.”
It’s a dark, melancholy song, but in the end, it leaves the listener with perhaps a slightly better outlook on life and the things that may be going on in their own. Then, of course, it’s off to the next track to raise a little more hell.
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