Song Lyrics

Her dad bred quarter horses that would never win
Her mother left them when she wasn't even ten
He sold their place and then
They got by following the race circuit
For months she cried herself to sleep
She'd beg her dad to take them back to their valley
To her mother and the cottonwood trees
Their old house and her horse Lazy

Her dad gave her wine coolers by thirteen
Then he lost his two best horses in Albuquerque
They came and took his truck and trailer too
He got on a drunk and he never came back
Oh Holly

Holly the Hustle they called her by sixteen
Living with a handicapper in his fifties
He taught her to drink Jack and Ginger
From the moment she'd wake
And follow him around and do whatever he'd say
She fell in love with him a desperate kid
They lived out of a Seville
Driving through the Western states
In Los Alamitos he got into a scrape
He got shot in a motel but she escaped

Holly the Hustle
Oh I know its hard world when there ain't no one coming for you
And the nights keep dropping you harder and harder

Holly the Hustle got beat up
By a man in El Paso she misjudged
She was nineteen with two broken ribs
Three busted fingers and nowhere to live
She healed up in Phoenix and worked a married man
Took him for sixty grand
She moved to Pasadena and it worked the same
But he left her in the Santa Anita Inn drunk and bleeding

Willy Vlautin

The duration of Holly the Hustle is 5:46 minutes and seconds.