By:Gillian Welch · Source Recording: Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson (2018)
Let me tell you buddy there's a faster gun
Comin' over yonder when tomorrow comes
Let me tell you buddy and it won't be long
'Til you find yourself singing your last cowboy song
Yippee ki-iy-ay when the roundup ends
Yippee ki-iy-ay and the campfire dims
Yippee ki-iy-ay he shouts and he sings
When a cowboy trades his spurs for wings
When they wrap my body in the bindling sheet
And they take my six irons pull the boots from my feet
Unsaddle my pony she'll be itchin' to roam
I'll be halfway to heaven under horsepower of my own
Yippee ki-iy-ay I'm glory bound
No more jingle jangle I lay my guns down
Yippee ki-iy-ay he shouts and he sings
When a cowboy trades his spurs for wings
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By:Gillian Welch · Source Recording:Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson (2018)
“When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings” was written by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings for the Coen Brothers’ 2018 film “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.” It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
The song is a cowboy’s gentle vision of the afterlife. It imagines the moment a cowboy lays down the hard things of this life — the spurs, the gun — and rises, with wings, toward a peaceful country beyond; in the film it is sung as a spirit drifts up toward heaven.
The song was performed in the film by Tim Blake Nelson, who played Buster Scruggs, and Willie Watson.
Single (When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings) (2019)
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The band goes quiet for a bar or two and you keep the time going.
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