Blue Mountain

Lyrics: Bob Weir, Josh Ritter, Josh Kaufman/[Fred Keller]
Music: Bob Weir, Josh Ritter, Josh Kaufman/[Fred Keller]

One of the songs on Bob Weir's new album Blue Mountain. He played an extract in an interview with Dan Rather in August 2015, introducing it:.

"It's an old cowboy tune that I've wanted to pull together for ... I first learnt it in the bunkhouse, I think, or I first heard it, and I've wanted to pull it together for fifty some years, and finally I'm doing it. In order to do that, I've had to write some of the verses that I didn't remember, and just go back - I guess it's the thought process."

"That's called 'Blue Mountain' [Dan Rather: And this is on a new album?] It's gonna be, yeah. This is sort of the bedrock - I'm probably gonna write maybe a dozen more verses for it."

The portion he sang was as follows:

I was born in a manger in Texas
The doggies and paints come round
My days there were troubled and restless
All the trouble I looked for, I found

My welcome wore thin, down in Texas
For reasons you won't want to know
Well I roped and I broke and I rambled
To where the sage and the pinon do grow

Blue mountain, you're azure deep
Blue mountain, your sides are steep
Blue mountain with a horse head on your side
You've stolen my love to keep
You've stolen my love to keep

The full lyrics on the recorded version are:

Blue mountain, you're azure deep
Blue mountain, your sides are steep
Blue mountain with a horse head on your side
You stolen my love to keep
You stolen my love to keep

Well I was born in a manger in Texas
All the pintos and paints come round
My days there were troubled and restless
All the bad news that I looked for, I found

My welcome wore thin down in Texas
For reasons you probably know
Well I roped and I broke and I rambled
To where the sage and the pinon grow

Blue mountain, you're azure deep
Blue mountain, your sides are steep
Blue mountain with a horse head on your side
You stolen my love to keep
You stolen my love to keep

Here is a snake in the rainbow
And here is the balsom and bow
And here are the ladders of light up to heaven
But blue mountain is all I need now

Oh, what kind of cut purse is the evening
To scatter her diamonds behind
We're all given a first and a last one
And blue mountain will be both of mine

Blue mountain, you're azure deep
Blue mountain, your sides are steep
Blue mountain with a horse head on your side
You stolen my love to keep
You stolen my love to keep

Bob Weir Recordings
	Date	Album
	2016	Blue Mountain

The chorus and some lines in the first two verses come from a song written by Judge Fred Keller. There's an account of the origins of the song here. The full lyrics of the original version are:

My home it was in Texas
My past you must not know
I seek a refuge from the law
Where the sage and pinon grow

Chorus
Blue Mountain, you're azure deep
Blue Mountain with sides so steep
Blue Mountain with horse head on your side
You have won my heart to keep

For the brand "LC" I ride
And the sleeper calves on the side
I'll own their hip side and shoulder, before I grow older
"Zapotaro", don't you tan my hide

I chum with Latigo Gordon
I drink at the Blue Goose Saloon
I dance at night with the Mormon girls
And ride home beneath the moon

I trade at Mons' store
With bullet holes in the door
His calico treasure my horse can measure
When I'm drunk and feeling sore

Yarn Gallus with shortened lope
Doc Few-Clothes without any soap
In the little green valley have made their sally
And for Slicks there's still some hope

In the summer time it's fine
In the winter the wind doth whine
But say, dear brother, if you want a mother
There's Ev on the old chuck line