OWNES’ Blues’ is a true story,” says Timmins. “Townes was a big craps player, you know, dice. We did a lot of crapsa 24 hour drive – and played craps the whole time. Townes is very familiar with that area because he lived in Colorado for a long time and was born in Texas. There’s a route that you can go through the Raton Pass, which cuts six hours off that journey. We had this bus driver who was an intimidating guy; a racist and a weird fly in the ointment of this nice tour. This whole time we were playing craps and Townes would be up, then suddenly he’d be down, and he’d be complaining about the driver because ‘if he’d just gone through the Raton Pass, we’d be there by now, I’d be up all this money’. That’s what the song is about: the characters on the bus, the band, about Townes, and about winning and losing and the ups and downs of craps and life.”
