I'm Out To Get
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Billy Brag
Contact Publisher - Woody Guthrie Publications/BMG Chrysalis

I’m out to get your greenback dollar
I’m out to get your silver change
I’m out to get your long black limo
You kept me down on my knees too long.

Now my daddy before me worked like I work
He was worked to death forty years or so
My mammy she died from grieving over him
How old she was I never did know.

I’m out to get your greenback dollar
I’m out to get your silver change
I’m out to get your long black limo
You kept me down on my knees too long.

Now the building you own you won at gambling
On dice and horses and ticker-tape machines
But that’s no sign that you are smarter that I am
I’m going to show you just what I mean.

I’m out to get your easy money
I’m out to get my share of your gold
I’m out to get my whiskey and women
I’m going to get back my life you stole.

We went to the judge and I talked with the tenants
We told him we had no hot water in the sink
He spent a half and hour upon his bench there
To tell us what a fine reputation our landlord’s got.

But I’m out to get your long green tender
I’m out to get your round town car
I’m out to fight and win a good job and wages
And a six room twin bed flat with a built in bar.

We told that judge how you played the horses
How you won this apartment building here
How you took our money and headed to Florida
To lay in the sun with women while we freeze here.

So, I’m out to get your excess bacon
I’m out to get my cut from you
I’m going to walk and talk and tell all my neighbors
How they ought to talk right up for their cut too.

It won’t be with no gun nor gambling wheel sir
That I will use to relieve you of your till
It will be in a nice friendly way with all my neighbors
Smelling and barking brother up and down your hill.

And you can’t hide along no oceans
And you can’t hide in no desert for long
We’re out to get back every penny that you won gambling
Because we can’t live, landlord, on a race horse song.


© Copyright Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & BMG Songs (BMI)
Available on:
Album cover art where song appears