Well-behaved women never make history,
That's what they say and it's true.
But well-behaved women don't even make music,
And that's what I wanted to do.

Not blessed to be born into deep-south squalor,
I seized on the next best thing,
For first-hand advice on that honky-tonk life,
That I wanted to play and sing.

I listened to Muddy and Lightnin' and Hank,
Sing two-timing broads done 'em wrong.
Then Bessie and Minnie and Big Maybell sang,
The opposite side of that song.

Lured by some of my rowdiest records,
The wild side of life came on strong,
With rent parties, juke joints and freight train whistles,
Begging me: Come on along!

While I'm doing dumb-ass high school homework,
Real Life is passing me by.
Bessie is belting out "Gimmie A Pigfoot,"
I'm nibbling Swiss cheese and rye.

But I had a 50-buck Gretsch guitar,
With a pickup so I could play lead.
Now, well-behaved chicks didn't wail, they strummed,
But me and my Gretsch disagreed.

Then came a Saturday afternoon gig,
The household Gestapo approved it.
In spite of a wimpy old cowgirl whistler,
The band found a beat and we grooved it.

Then I brought the house down with "Git-tar Boogie,"
Just like I'd done it before.
It's one thing to play for your bedroom mirror,
Another to hear the crowd roar.

And, guess what? That band had a kick-ass plan,
They first cut the whistling chick free,
They added a bass, and a hot-mama singer,
And then they came looking for me.

See, Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith made a record,
The hottest Big Thing that year.
So bands got requests four or five times a night --
What every drunk wanted to hear.

So there I was, blinking in stage lights,
In a skid row bar called the Ace.
Instead of: I wish they could see me now,
I thought: what a great hiding place!

The higher forms of low-life turned out,
To crowd that battle-scarred bar,
To check out the chicks getting down with the boogie,
And fatten our hungry tip jar.

Each night in that place, I looked in the face,
Of the least, the lost, and the last.
And no way in hell could anyone tell,
Whether genius or clown staggered past.

But honorable? Some. Noble? A few.
As I was about to find out,
But put in a sum, this was the scum,
That my parents had warned me about.

Hookers and pushers and boozers and losers,
Barflies and junkies galore,
Con men and slickers and old guitar pickers,
The beat cop that lurked by the door.

Gamblers and pimps and thugs and wimps,
The preacher that covered the beat,
Philosopher guy with the patch on his eye,
And the card-shark that taught me to cheat.

The gender benders and gothic dead-enders,
That everyone warned me about :
Hang on to your soul in the wee-small hours,
When the bottom feeders come out.

The skid row preacher said Jesus would save me,
But I never fell for that jive.
So the rounders and hustlers and misfits and rebels,
They taught me how to survive.