Song of the Day 10/27: Lucinda Williams, “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten”

This is my favorite song on Lucinda Williams’ masterpiece, 1998’s “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.” When I learned that most of the lyrics were inspired by photos in a book called “Juke Joint,” a collection of photographs Birney Imes took in the 1980s of roadhouses in the Mississippi Delta, I bought the book.

Some of the lyrics sound like the signs you can find in many dive bars — some form of “Sorry, no credit, don’t ask” is nearly ubiquitous — but the refrain is more puzzling. “June Bug vs. Hurricane” had me stumped until I saw the photo.

You can’t read the writing over the teens’ heads in this small reproduction, so here’s a blow-up of the graffito in question, which also provided the song’s title:

Other phrases are taken from other photos in the book, but the song pulls in other images as well. Williams’ friend and drinking buddy, the late Austin music journalist Margaret Moser, said that while Williams was writing the album she was also fascinated at the time with a book on Appalachian snake handlers, which explains the second verse. The final verse is about Williams’ former boyfriend, Clyde Woodward, a fixture on Austin’s music scene before he drank himself to death at age 40 in 1991.