A recurring theme in Grateful Dead songs is the outlaw on the run. For those of us who travelled around the country to see Dead shows, the lyrics were easy to self-apply.

In Friend of the Devil we hear: ‘I lit out from Reno, I was trailed by twenty hounds,
didn’t get to sleep that night, ’til the morning came around’. In Sugaree, Jerry tells an old friend not to tell the authorities that she knows him. In Bertha, Jerry’s on the run again. And most famously, the song Truckin’ describes the lifestyle of keeping one step ahead of the law.

Mississippi Half-Step is but another of this genre.

“Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo”
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia

On the day that I was born
Daddy sat down and cried

I had the mark just as plain as day

which could not be denied

They say that Cain caught Abel

rolling loaded dice,

ace of spades behind his ear

and him not thinking twice

Half-step

Mississippi Uptown Toodleloo

Hello baby, I’m gone, goodbye

Half a cup of rock and rye

Farewell to you old southern sky

I’m on my way – on my way

If all you got to live for

is what you left behind

get yourself a powder charge

and seal that silver mine

I lost my boots in transit babe

A pile of smoking leather

Nailed a retread to my feet

and prayed for better weather

Half-step

Mississippi Uptown Toodleloo

Hello, baby, I’m gone, good-bye

Half a cup of rock and rye

Farewell to you old southern sky

I’m on my way – on my way

They say that when your ship comes in

the first man takes the sails

The second takes the afterdeck

The third the planks and rails

What’s the point to callin shots?

This cue ain’t straight in line

Cueball’s made of styrofoam

and no one’s got the time

Half-step

Mississippi Uptown Toodleloo

Hello baby, I’m gone, goodbye

Half a cup of rock and rye

Farewell to you old southern sky

I’m on my way – on my way

Across the Rio Grand-eo

Across the lazy river

Across the Rio Grand-eo

Across the lazy river

The song begins with a variation of the “born under a bad sign’ theme. The singer was born to be wild, marked from the beginning to be a sinner, a cheat, a betrayor of his brother. And this explains why he has ‘gone goodbye’.

For the next stanza, it’s helpful to know a bit of Jerry Garcia’s personal history. He narrowly survived an auto accident in 1960, and he found a new dedication and purpose in life afterwards. This helps explain the lines:

If all you got to live for
is what you left behind
get yourself a powder charge
and seal that silver mine

Lost my boots in transit, babe,
a pile of smoking leather…”

“Events in my life suggested to me that maybe it was going to be my responsibility to keep upping the ante. In was in an automobile accident in 1960 with four other guys…ninety plus miles an hour on a back road. We hit these dividers and went flying, I guess. All I know is that I was sitting in the car and there was this…disturbance…and the next thing I was in a field, far enough away from the car that I couldn’t see it.

The car was crumpled like a cigarette pack…and inside it were my shoes. I’d been thrown completely out of my shoes and through the windshield. One guy did die in the group. It was like loosing the golden boy, the one who had the most to offer. For me it was crushing, but I had the feeling that my life had been spared to do something…not to take any bullshit, to either go whole hog or not at all…That was when my life began. Before that I had been living at less than capacity. That event was the slingshot for the rest of my life. It was my second chance, and I got serious.”

And yet, in typical Garcia fashion, even though he rededicated himself to the future and metaphorically sealed off his past, he doesn’t see the point in mapping out his future by ‘calling shots’. The world is too unpredictable for that.

When people picture Deadheads, they picture hippies. But most of their songs are about the Old West, gamblers, outlaws, charlatans, whores, and life on the run. Maybe I like the Grateful Dead for the same reason I like Deadwood.