Chris' Songs - Powerball

I wrote this song while I was playing the Powerball lottery every now and then. I wondered what winning the lottery would do to someone, especially one that got up to $100 million sometimes. Well, take a look.

Powerball

My father owns a bait shop that he got from his old man
I guess that makes it a legacy
But running some old bait shop in this backwater town
Well, that just ain't the life for me

So I took my lucky dice and I rolled up a storm
And I wrote down all the numbers that they said
And I went down to the Shell oil, and slapped down a buck
And got a ticket from my buddy Jed.

Powerball, Powerball
Was an estimated sixty thousand G
And now that bait and tackle is a nationwide chain
All because I won that great big lottery

Powerball, Powerball
2, 4, 7, 8, 13 and Powerball 3
And now that bait and tackle is a nationwide chain
All because I won that great big lottery

So, in the end, lotteries don't tend to change people's lives except that they wind up doing what they've been doing, only to a much greater extent.

In case you missed the joke, you can't roll a 13 with two die. And "sixty thousand G" is the same as $60 million (which happened to be what the lottery was when I wrote the song).

My inspiration for the music came from two places. When I was on vacation in Toronto, I heard a jug band play. There is also a lot of influence in the song to a song my mom used to always sing called "Watermelon Hangin' On the Vine", so much so that you could easily mix the songs together (of course, lyric-wise it wouldn't make any sense).

Why "Shell oil" instead of any other gas station? I guess this came from a song a buddy of mine used to sing about a chicken who wouldn't lay eggs... it's a long story, but it was funny (trust me). Why "Jed"? This comes from a Sesame Street cartoon.

My med school singing group, the Notochords, sang this song for a couple of years, and now my current group, MACH1, sings it. It can be found on MACH 1's demo.

-Chris Tess


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chris@rarb.org