They kicked us out for playing too loud   I carried my amp out through the crowd   Some chick took a beer and threw it in my face   But I kept right on walking      Outside it was warm   There was a good crowd on the strip   We set our stuff down and had a smoke   Like we was waiting for a ride      And all the while I was thinking   You gotta keep moving in a mean, mean town   It's better going nowhere than just standing around   By tomorrow morning I'll be leaving town   I'll go any place but I ain't going down      Now I called Shorty and Lefty   There was a bassman called Beans   So we split to nail a rumor   About some work in New Orleans      A twenty fed the tank   Two bucks fed the band   Maybe we could make it   Down in jambalaya band      In a Meade Lux Lewis bar   That's where we found the job   Knocking tinpan out for tips   Mostly from the mob      Said okay we'll take it   When they're drunk, we'll play the blues   We'll get some shirts from the islands   And some Cuban rock 'n' roll shoes      And all the while I was thinking   You gotta keep moving in a mean, mean town   It's better going nowhere than just standing around   By tomorrow morning I'll be leaving town   I'll go anyplace but I ain't going down      But when we played the lost highway   A juice head said, we was hicks   And the whole bar began to beat us   With pool half sticks      They got the radio out of the car   They must have used a bomb   But when we piled in and gunned her   She still sang the sweetest sung      Lefty woke among the bottles   Said North he could not come   We left him on canal street   Trading in his drums      I saw Elvis hitchhiking   Out on the interstate   And Beans was getting paranoid   About our California plates      And all the while I was thinking   You gotta keep moving in a mean mean town   It's better going nowhere than just standing around   By tomorrow morning I'll be leaving town   I'll go anyplace but I ain't going down      A cruiser pulled us over   Right across the line   Booked us in as vagrants   In holding tank number nine      You learn how to flat pick   When you're looking at a forty four   You do the orange blossom special   Till the peel falls on the floor      The bassman had a bust   From back home in a raid   So it was just me and Shorty   Standing on main parade      We liquidized our assets   In a bar and did not talk   Then we hopped a non stop greyhound   To the big bad beauty of New York      I woke up on twenty third street   As he backed into the slot   I saw that me and Shorty   Had been robbed of what we got      Then a guy said through the window   This is the end of the line   I said, brother, I'm a guitar slinger   And this is just doing fine