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The River King

from Prayer Street Blues by Jeremy Joyce

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lyrics

When the moon is at its highest
On a riverboat flectin' gold
There plays the ancient gambler
each chip is another man’s soul

Where the dead with the living
A pretty woman with corpse-like eyes
She lost a game on the River King
Now soulless she will never die

I sit down with the ancient
Had him prove me the game was fair
Show me the face of my one true lover
When I look she's a standing there

I was a poor boy, no land, no money
So I traveled this country side
Until I met a girl from Kentucky
With a face like a diamond shines

In the heat of the summer we swam in the river
She held me close and then she'd swim away
She swum too far and the current drug her
Down to the bottom where her body now lay


A gold coin on the table, something written in Latin
They say its age is two thousand years
I hear a voice call from beneath the water
A skeletal hand begins to deal

The river King has the Ace of Spades showing
Tell me boy, what's it gonna be
Jack of Diamonds, Jack of Diamonds
Why you paired with this lonesome old three

He says quit now and keep your soul
Leave my kingdom and live out your days
But you've never known love like a girl from Kentucky
Oh lord won't you send me an eight

Then I awake from a dream next to my woman
In old Kentucky where the warbler sings
Was there ever a current that swept her away
Ever a boat named the River King

credits

from Prayer Street Blues, released December 31, 2015

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all rights reserved

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Jeremy Joyce New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans couldn’t offer a more appropriate musical backdrop for Jeremy Joyce, whose genre-defying songs are born out of Jeremy’s macro-level interest in music history and his micro-level interest in what makes songs tick.

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