Counterfeiter’s Blues

He said "drink deeply of the wine, my friend, breathe fully in the smoke"
"Eat the fish that he conjured, this is the bread that Jesus broke"
This is grape juice and cheap vodka, man, this isn't even wine
I'm smokin' shredded cardboard, eating sawdust baked with lime
This is not the truth you tell me, but some terrible, evil joke
It sounds to me like the counterfeit blues have got you by the throat

There seem to be an awful lot of charlatans round here
Hustlers, cheats and anglers, fixers, sharps and mutineers
The factory and subterfuge and corporato cheat
Conspire to fast reduce us to the stamping of our feet
The lords of mass producto mass product at quite a pace
It won't be long them counterfeit blues'll run the whole damn place

These notes that you've been paying with are a little bit too green
The printing's off, the ink has got a polyester sheen
Well, your bill has grown too large and now you'll have to work it off
And your snout will have to make its way from the far end of the trough
You got suckered in tryin' to make your make your money overnight
It looks to me like the counterfeit blues'll be doggin' you all of your life

The worn out western hat I got no longer smells like horse
I can't afford to keep one around now that rooster's gone, of course
I guess I've left it all behind me now except for when I write
And sing ancestral praises of the ones who knew that life
Well, years of RocknRolla have extracted quite a fee
Maybe them old counterfeit blues have been creepin' up on me