Guy Clark sings "The Randall Knife"

Guy Clark plays "The Randall Knife" live on Country's Family Reunion: The Songwriters! Lyrics: My father had a Randall knife, my mother gave it to him When he went off to World War II to save us all from ruin Now if you've ever held a Randall knife, you know my father well If a better blade was ever made, it was probably forged in hell My father was a good man, he was a lawyer by his trade Only once did I ever see him misuse the blade Well, it almost cut his thumb off when he took it for a tool The knife was made for darker things, you could not bend the rules Well, he let me take it camping once on a Boy Scout jamboree I broke a half-an-inch off tryin' to stick it in a tree Well, I hid it from him for a while, but the knife and he were one And he put it in his bottom drawer without a hard word won There it slept and there it stayed for twenty some-odd years Sort of like Excalibur except waiting for a tear My father died when I was forty and I couldn't find a way to cry Not because I didn't love him, not because he didn't try Well, I'd cried for every lesser thing: for whiskey, pain, and beauty But he deserved a better tear and I was not quite ready So we took his ashes out to sea and poured 'em off the stern And then threw the roses in the wake of everything we'd learned And when we got back to the house they asked me what I wanted Not the law books, not the watch–I need the thing he's haunted My hand burned for the Randall knife there in the bottom drawer And I found a tear for my father's life and all that it stood for Listen to more great Country's Family Reunion music at lnk.to/CfrListenNow Shop our store at countrysfamilyreunion.myshopify.com ‪@guyclarkmusic‬ ‪@CountrysFamilyReunion‬