Dust and Gunpowder
A cinematic 1960s western song with nylon guitar, trumpet, harmonica, barroom piano, strings, and galloping percussion. A lone cowboy roams the frontier on a path of revenge, chasing his family’s killers and defending the innocent.
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
Boot prints fading in the hardpan clay
Sun hangs heavy on a crooked day
Cross on a chain, stained dark with rust
Names on my tongue, ground down to dust
[Chorus]
Dust and gunpowder prayers on my breath
Every sunrise just another kind of death
I ride for the broken, the lost, the betrayed
By the blood of my own, this debt gets paid
Dust and gunpowder prayers in the wind
I will not turn, I will not bend
[Verse 2]
Card house town with a swinging door
Laughter stops when my spurs hit the floor
Eyes look down, but the guilty stare
One hand shakes as it drifts to the chair
[Chorus]
Dust and gunpowder prayers on my breath
Every sunrise just another kind of death
I ride for the broken, the lost, the betrayed
By the blood of my own, this debt gets paid
Dust and gunpowder prayers in the wind
I will not turn, I will not bend
[Bridge]
I hear my boy in the coyote’s cry (hey…)
Her Sunday hymn in the vulture’s fly
If I fall short of the devil’s gate
Let the ones I saved decide my fate
[Chorus]
Dust and gunpowder prayers on my breath
Every sunrise just another kind of death
I ride for the broken, the lost, the betrayed
By the blood of my own, this debt gets paid
Dust and gunpowder prayers in the wind
Ride ‘til the sky burns clean again