SLEEPDRIVER song #11 from album, FLOWERS AND THE COLOR OF PAINT (1995)
lyrics:Ithaka (written 1991) music: Pedro Passos, produced by Joe Fossard.
La to Pheonix in Six hours straight
Is he awake or is he asleep
Drives all night in his GTO
To see a squaw he’s left by a red rock
SLEEPDRIVER, SLEEPDRIVER
Maybe it’s love maybe a death wish
Not sure himself in his state of despair
Fourteen hour days, five days a week
All for a squaw he’s left by a red rock
Sleepdriver drove to be on the big screen
But the star became a grip (non-union)
for not much pay
A little is better than none,
He sends the checks home he sends her to school
SLEEPDRIVER, SLEEPDRIVER
And every Friday by eight
He’s on the Ten heading east…for love and home cooking
But by Sunday at six, he’s on the Ten heading west
He’s got to get back,
he’s got an eight a.m. call
All the way in Valencia
SLEEPDRIVER, SLEEPDRIVER
The Sleepdriver drove back and forth for years
Through dust storms and rain
and degrees of a hundred and eight
The Sleepdriver drove
Dozing off and dozing on
Reflector hypnosis a trance-like state.
SLEEPDRIVER, SLEEPDRIVER
The sleepdriver drove the whole night straight
But one night, he just plain fell asleep.
And he dreamed of his great grandfather
In a feather headband and a pair of moccasins
…young as a buck
And he was in a new land
Even farther from the squaw he’d left
By the red rock
