California from Holy Golden by Mikayla McVey

Met a young man in a lowbrow bar whose mother died while he was arriving back in California. If I know something it’s you can’t trust folks with no eyebrows on’m, but we met on a whim in a lowbrow bar in California.
My mother’s mother was a highbrow New Yorker– West Side roller-skater, royal daughter of a private investigator– who came to California. If I know something, it’s the wind in the canyon off the ocean in midsummer– it’s cold in California in July (don’t pick the poppies or you’ll die or go to prison).
Metta, man. There was meaning for miles between Atlantic City and the gambling, rambling family that he knew and all the family that he didn’t care to hear from. If I know something, it’s the holy golden lonely mess of the West– I miss her and she isn’t even dead, she’s like my mother (who is beautiful and can be hard to handle).
Met a young man in a lowbrow bar whose mother died while he was arriving back in California.
My grandfather’s father was a Midwestern horse doctor who came to California with the cavalry in 1925; I met my father in a dive while his mother was dying. If I know something, it’s the holy golden lonely mess of the West– I miss her and she isn’t even dead– she’s like my mother (who is beautiful and can be hard to handle).
Met a young man, we got drunk on California in a brow-beaten, dirty, bar where you can hear the trains and smoke. The stars came out. I thought about his life without his eyebrows or his mother. If I know something, it’s you can’t trust folks with no eyebrows on’em, but we met on a whim in a lowbrow bar in California.
Met a young man in a lowbrow bar whose mother died while he was arriving back in California. If I know something, it’s the holy golden lonely mess of the West. I miss her and she isn’t even dead. She’s like my mother.

• Folk
• cowgirl
• indie
• songwriter
• soul
• women
• Oakland