Town With No Cheer

This week at Glyn Wilton’s Mixed Music Bag,
he’s asking us to write about a song in which
the title or a line mentions the current month. 
Here’s my featured March artist and his song.

Tom Waits, Grammy Award-winning musician from Pomona, CA, is known for his raspy voice, darkly humorous lyrics, and unusual instrumentation. He parlayed his unique musical vision into a side career as a character actor specializing in the same down-at-the-heels men who often populate his songs. During his early career in the 1970s, the vivid storyteller’s distinctive blend of outdated musical styles and Beat Poetry earned him a cult following, but over the next four decades, Waits became highly sought after to contribute music to over 100 film and television productions, while his ever-evolving sound broke through to larger audiences. Waits always offers an inventive, humorous, and ultimately sympathetic portrayal of outcasts from the lower rungs of society.

🎶     🎶     🎶     🎶     🎶     🎶    🎶

My featured song this week is “Town With No Cheer”. Waits had this to say about the song: “When my wife heard the song for the first time she said, ‘Oh, gee, you must have loved her very much’. So I said, ‘Wait a minute. This is not a love song. This is about a guy who can’t get a drink!’ It’s about a miserable old town in Australia that made the news when they shut down the only watering hole. We found an article about it in a newspaper when we were there and hung on to it for a year. So I said, ‘Ah, I’m going to write something about that someday’, and finally got around to it. That’s a freedom bell upfront just trying to get a feel of a ghost town, tumbleweed and that kind of thing. It’s basically a folk song.“

Serviceton is a small town in Victoria, Australia. Faster trains, increased road haulage and decreased passenger numbers saw the railway refreshment rooms close in 1981 and the brick station with its 300 yard platform was closed in 1986. “Town With No Cheer” takes inspiration from an old Aussie song called “Pub With No Beer”.

This is “Town With No Cheer” by Tom Waits

LYRICS

Well it’s hotter ‘n blazes and all the long faces
There’ll be no oasis for a dry local grazier
There’ll be no refreshment for a thirsty jackaroo¹
From Melbourne to Adelaide on the overlander
With newfangled buffet cars and faster locomotives
The train stopped in Serviceton
Less and less often
There’s nothing sadder than a town with no cheer
Vic Rail² decided the canteen was no longer necessary there
No spirits, no bilgewater and 80 dry locals
And the high noon sun beats a hundred and four
There’s a hummingbird
Trapped in a closed down shoe store
This tiny Victorian rhubarb
Kept the watering hole open for sixty five years
Now it’s boilin’ in a miserable March 21^st
Wrapped the hills in a blanket
Of Patterson’s Curse³
The train smokes down the xylophone
There’ll be no stopping here
All ya can be is thirsty in a town with no cheer
No bourbon, no branchwater
Though the townspeople here
Fought her Vic Rail decree tooth and nail
Now it’s boilin’ in a miserable March 21^st
Wrapped the hills in a blanket
Of Patterson’s Curse
The train smokes down the xylophone
There’ll be no stopping here
All ya can be is thirsty in a town with no cheer

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Thomas Alan Waits
Town With No Cheer lyrics © Jalma Music

¹Young man working on sheep or cattle farm
² Victoria Railways
³An invasive weed toxic to livestock

Mixed Music Bag 2025 – On the Fifth Day

Big thanks to Glyn Wilton for hosting Mixed Music Bag each week. Please be sure to follow the link to check out Glyn’s site.

Thanks for joining me today and spinning some tunes.

See you on the flip side. 😎

NAR©2025

All text, graphics and videos are copyright for Nancy’s Notes 🖊️🎶, The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk, and The Rhythm Section, et. al., and are not to be used without permission. NAR©2017-present.