One Good Year

Video: [bad word] /www [bad word] watch?v=mBGeD82gLsc

It's New Years Day just like the day before 
Same old skies of grey, same empty bottles on the floor 
Another years gone by, and I was thinking once again 
How can I take this losing hand and somehow win 

Chorus 

Just give me One Good Year. To get my feet back on the ground 
I've been chasing grace. Grace ain't so easily found 
One bad hand can devil a man, chase him and carry him down 
I've got to get out of here, just give me One Good Year 

I'm burning oil, engine's running rough 
I drive from job to job, but it's never enough 
I can't find the will to just up and get away 
Some kind of chain is holding me down and making me stay 

Chorus 

Just give me One Good Year. To get my feet back on the ground 
I've been chasing grace. Grace ain't so easily found 
One bad hand can devil a man, chase him and carry him down 
I've got to get out of here, just give me One Good Year 

Bridge 

It's a bitter wind in your face every day 
It's the little sins that wear your soul away 
When you start giving in, where do the promises all go 
Will your darkest hour write a blank check on your soul 

It's New Years Day just like the day before 
Same old skies of grey, same empty bottles on the floor 
Another years gone by, and I was thinking once again 
How can I take this losing hand and somehow win 

Chorus 

Just give me One Good Year. To get my feet back on the ground 
I've been chasing grace. Grace ain't so easily found 
One bad hand can devil a man, chase him and carry him down 
I've got to get out of here, just give me One Good Year

----------------------------
Slaid writes:

In ’99 I had been in Austin for eight years, trying to make a name in the local music scene. I was still trying to find an audience, and I was nowhere near making a living. I felt like less than a man for having my wife work so hard to pay bills I couldn't pay. Every year I fell another two or three thousand dollars in debt. To try to catch up, I would occasionally check into a medical research facility as a professional human guinea pig (httor//www [bad word] stories/dayjob.html). For years I avoided a day job so l could work on songs, but eventually I took a job with a contractor friend. I didn't have any carpentry skills, so for myself I mostly did demolition.

When I was writing One Good Year I was wondering how much longer I could keep following this dream. Did I have what it takes or was I being foolish? Would the new record finally break me into where I could start paying my bills? For the first time in 10 years I was imagining what it would be like to quit and find some other career.

I was in my friend Karen Poston's living room in South Austin, trying out song ideas. We were catching up on our latest disappointments in life, and Karen said with a sigh, ''AII we need is one good year”. I said, ''That sounds like a song”. We worked on it for a while and didn't come up with anything. (But we wrote most of Horseshoe Lounge later that day).

Months later I wrote an early version of One Good Year, based on some trouble I saw a friend go through (lost his job, wife left and took the kids). But it was kind of predictable. I knew the song could be much better. So I sat down with Steve Brooks, another fellow Austin writer, and he injected some life into it and showed me a new, more interesting direction. I finished it up a few months later. Just in time to make it onto the Broke Down record. Steve and Karen don't get much recognition in Austin, but they each have a handful of truly brilliant songs, in my opinion

Russell writes:

He's from Maine.
I heard his music first in Austin.
I’m from New Zealand.
I saw him live for the first time in Toronto.
Isn’t it a small world?
I like most everything Slaid writes, but this