Lyrics Up in the Old Hotel - Tom Russell

Up in the old hotel, late one saturday night
Ma and Pa Kettle on the radio, spoiling for a fight
And it's, oh yeah, I remember it well
The night we fell in love up in the old hotel

Up in the old hotel you threw your laundry down a chute
Old drunken Maggie yelled up, "Well, rooty-toot, toot, toot!"
And the clothes came back smelling of cheap perfume and muscatel
Ragtime Maggie, the queen up in the old hotel

The ghost of Joseph Mitchell came stumbling down the hall
"I got nothing more to say, folks – I believe I said it all"
And who could argue with a ghost? Because he said it so well
In that book he wrote, called "Up in the Old Hotel"

Remember that Spanish restaurant? Right outside the door?
Saffran and chorizo came up through the cracks in our floor
And the jugs of dark sangria cast an Andalusisan spell
Every Friday night up in the old hotel

"Eighteen straight shots of
Whiskey, boys, I believe that's the record"
The last words of Dylan Thomas, they took him out on a stretcher
We could hear his wife Caitlin screaming all the way from Wales
"Is that bastard of a man dead yet? Up in your old hotel?"

You recall that song that haunted our winter bones?
Louis Armstrong's "I Guess I Get the Papers and Go Home"?
And it conjured up New York – and it put us in a spell
Every Sunday night up in the old hotel

Up in the old hotel some old ones ended up alone
All those things that seemed so quaint now haunted their fragile bones
But there's a thin line between
Nostalgia and a drunken "Oh what the hell!"
They were the best of times, up in the old hotel

So out on the wrought-iron balcony, I stare into the New York night
A little weary, but building wings for the second half of life
Spouting lines from "Prufrock", about sawdust and oyster shells
About sawdust and oyster shells
We all had poetic leanings up in the old hotel

They were the best of times, up in the old hotel