Gutter Baby

In all my travels, never have I met a gnarlier bunch of traveling folks than the “gutter punks.” I once got off a bus in New Orleans and immediately got heckled by one across the street yelling, “Hippie! Give me money!” Hitchhiking around the U.S. and Canada, I met quite a few – jamming, sleeping and hanging around on the streets, trying to catch lifts along the way.

Inspired by people I met on the street around Montreal, Humboldt & Mendocino counties, this song is an amalgamation of stories I’ve heard from these folks, some of my own experiences traveling, and some inspiration for a happy ending from someone who made it out from the streets into a “normal” life.

My first demo for this song was completed in January 2024 as part of a song-a-week challenge. Though most of it was written then, some of the lines go back to a dusty notebook I filled around 2014-2015 when I was hitchhiking around the states real heavy. I was looking for notes for another song when I found these words. I scrapped most of what I had written then, but the core idea was there – the story of a “Gutter Baby.”

Just a baby
Fourteen years old
Scared to go back home
Take your chances
Hiding in the streets
And learning to survive
Starting a new life as
A gutter baby

Find some punks on the street
Who take you under their wing
They get you high and teach you to get by and you start traveling
In every new town new trouble with the same struggles
You graduate from the bottle to the pipe and to the needle
Oh gutter baby
Gutter baby

Gutter baby
Rabid on the street
How did the world forsake you
Gutter baby
They got you hooked
Hooked on poison hooked on violence
Hooked on crime giving every reason
For them to jack you up
Gutter baby

The cops know just who to fuck with when they spot you on their beat
They’ll take any excuse to pluck you off the street
They don’t care whether they lock you up or drive you to the edge of their town
And they know that no ones gonna trip if they beat the shit out of
A gutter baby
Gutter baby

Not a baby
You’re growing old
With dreams of your own
Done with trouble
All the drugs and drama
All the death and all the trauma

You leave it in the past
You’re cleaning up your act
You’re going to be a dad
Now you have yourself a chance
To give a love you never had
A baby
Your baby

It ain’t easy to build when you’ve been beaten down
And thought you’d be the next young punk to end up in the ground
You’ve been cast aside abused and brutalized and didn’t know why
But all the pain and trouble means nothing when you look in those eyes
And see no struggle
No fear
No struggle
Just a baby