Bill Anderson - Back When He Was Hungry lyrics

He came to town with a lot of dreams

Swapped BMG for KFC

And four strings on his Gibson

And now he's frying chicken.

He swore someday the world of country music

but he held on to his faded dreams

Would be his'n his jeans and cowboy hat

He drove a beat up Chevy truck

He still leans in that microphone

And he didn't have no money

Says you want some fries with that

But he was such a god ole boy.

The last time that I saw him

Back when he was hungry

He was singin' down at Tootsie's

He wrote some songs and walked the streets

A big tattoo on both his arms

Beggin' folks to listen and his earring was a beauty.

Sometimes he crawled just like a snake

He said, ''I'm goin' rock'n roll.''

Without a pit to hiss in those guys make all the money

He looked like Garth and sang like Hank

From now on you can call me.

And everybody loved him

the artist formerly known as Hungry

He swore he'd never change a thing

Back when he was hungry.

Back when BMI and CMA were only letters

And R&R was what you took to get to feeling better

And Billboard was a road sign

Not a chart that came on Monday

Life was oh, so simple back then

Back when he was hungry.

And then one day he wrote a song

That got someone's attention

The A&R at BMG got J-O-E to listen

Then Joe called James and James called Don

Don called Mrs. Hilley and Oermann wrote

He's gonna be the next big hot hillbilly.

Well his record went to number one

And the good ole boy went crazy

He hired a band then fired a band

He toured and then got lazy.

suddenly he knew it all

The rest of us were dummies

he scarcely could remember

Back when he was hungry.

Well, he married and then he got divorced

And met this cute young honey

He thought she craved his body

But she only craved his money.

She cleaned out his bank account

Then ran off with his drummer

Left him where he started from

Back when he was hungry.

Well, he lost his deal and life got real

And he had to give up pickin'...