Jason Isbell Songs - Dress Blues Lyrics

Jason Isbell - Dress Blues

Jason Isbell - Dress Blues Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Sirens of the Ditch
Released: 2007

Dress Blues Lyrics

What can you see from your window?
I can't see anythin' from mine
Flags on the side of the highway
And scripture on grocery store signs

Maybe eighteen was too early
Maybe thirty or forty is too
Did you get your chance to make peace with the man
Before He sent down his angels for you?

Mamas and grand mamas love you
'Cause that's all they know how to do
You never planned on the bombs in the sand
Or sleepin' in your Dress Blues

Your wife said this all would be funny
When you got back home in a week
Turn twenty two and we'd celebrate you
In a bar or a tent by the creek

Your baby would just about be here
And your very last tour would be up
But you won't be back, they're all dressin' in black
Drinkin' sweet tea in Styrofoam cups

Mamas and grand mamas love you
American boys hate to lose
You never planned on the bombs in the sand
Or sleepin' in your dress blues

The high school gymnasium's ready
Full of flowers and old Legionnaires
Nobody showed up to protest
Just sniffle and stare

There's red, white and blue in the rafters
And there's silent old men from the Corps
What did they say when they shipped you away
To fight somebody's Hollywood war?

Nobody here could forget you
You showed us what we had to lose
You never planned on the bombs in the sand
Or sleepin' in your dress blues
You never planned on the bombs in the sand
Or sleepin' in your dress blues

Writer/s: Isbell, Jason
Publisher: Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Dress Blues

This song was inspired by the death of Isbell's school colleague, Corporal Matthew Conley, a US Marine who was killed in the Iraq War. Isbell told Uncut magazine (February 2014) : "I knew Matt Conley not very well, he was a few years younger. I was coming off a tour with the (Drive-By) Truckers, and I called my mom and she told me about his funeral, which she'd attended that day, and when I got home I wrote 'Dress Blues' in a time it takes to write it down on a piece of paper. I already had the chord progression from a song I've been working on about Mickey Rooney, of all things. The song just fit that tune."