"The Randall Knife"...a song by Guy Clark...

Joined
Jan 13, 2005
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I don't know if this is the proper forum for this, if nothing else, it can serve as an introduction, as I am relatively new here.

I’ve only been seriously interested in knives for a couple of years now—since I got seriously into cooking, actually. I have been involved in music for much longer.

There’s a song I have liked for a long time by a singer \ songwriter from Texas named Guy Clark. Many of you have probably never heard of him, but he’s a nothing short of a legend in certain circles.

Anyway, the song is called “The Randall Knife.” And for the longest time, I never really knew what a Randall knife even was—but I knew I liked this song. Needless to say, the song has greater meaning to me now.

In case anyone is wondering, the song is almost a “spoken word” piece—it’s sang very slowly over a finger-picked chord progression. Here it is:

My father had a Randall knife
My mother gave it to him
When he went off to World War Two
To save us all from ruin
If you've ever held a Randall knife,
Then you know my father well--
If a better blade was ever made
It was probably forged in hell

My father was a good man
A lawyer by his trade
And only once did I ever see
Him misuse the blade
It almost cut his thumb off
When he took it for a tool
The knife was made for darker things
And you could not bend the rules

He let me take it camping once
On a Boy Scout jamboree--
And I broke a half an inch off
Trying to stick it in a tree
I hid it from him for a while
But the knife and he were one
He put it in his bottom drawer
Without a hard word one

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
I'd cried for every lesser thing
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 threw the roses in the wake
Of everything we'd learned
When we got back to the house
They asked me what I wanted
Not the lawbooks, 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...


~Guy Clark
from the record Dublin Blues
 
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