Will Hoge – Midway Motel

This is my contribution to Song Lyric Sunday for Jim Adams’s blog. This week’s prompt…A song with a harmonica

From his 2020 album, Tiny Little Movies. The song has not charted.

From Rollingstone.com

Hoge doesn’t shy away from challenging himself on Tiny Little Movies. He poses existential questions about where he’s landed in his own life, at 47. On “Maybe This Is OK,” he wonders if he’s at peace with the way things turned out for him. (He is.) “It’s a funny thing to say,” he sings, “but maybe this is OK.” While Hoge remains ambitious and dedicated to expanding his audience — he won over crowds opening for SoCal punks Social Distortion on their 2018 tour — he’s not about to repeatedly ram his head into Nashville’s wall.

“If I feel like I’m a failure every time I do something, then there’s not a point in doing it. It’s been an interesting couple years of realizing that,” Hoge says. “There are bands that I love and admire that have changed the way that I play music or think about the world, and they drive their own van and never played a venue that’s bigger than 300 people. I got into this because I wanted to try and write great songs and make great records and play great shows.”

Midway Motel

I’m not alone, there’s a bible and a telephone
And a tv that keeps flashing off and on
Yeah, it’s as broken as the world outside
Down the hall, there’s a bar with no last call
Mrs. Jenkins pours the drinks that that make me fall
When I want to stumble back again

At the Midway Motel
Just a mile down Highway 5
Everybody’s got a story they’re trying to tell
You can run away or hold on
You can buy or you can sell
You get what you want
At the Midway Motel

Corner booth, there’s a girl out looking for the truth
With a pain in her eyes that could make you cry
Yeah I wish we could go back in time
Look at him, no scars and a crooked grin
Thinking that the world is his
Who am I to try to change his mind?

At the Midway Motel
Just a mile down Highway 5
Everybody’s got a story they’re trying to tell
You can run away or hold on
You can buy or you can sell
You get what you want at the Midway Motel

I keep a key that opens up 203
It’s got everything that I need
When I want to leave it all behind

At the Midway Motel
Just a mile down Highway 5
Everybody’s got a story they’re trying to tell
You can run away or hold on
You can buy or you can sell
You get what you want at the Midway Motel

Written by Will Hoge and Ricky Young.