Dead Man's Hand

**"Dead Man's Hand"** is a Buck Vernon song about an encounter he had with Johnnie Redmayne. Vernon is driving back out west, late at night, when he sees a body on the road. Vernon digs a grave in the desert, but Redmayne grabs his arm when he tries to bury him. Redmayne explains he know he is dead but he doesn't want to lie in a grave, there are no thrills in the afterlife, and that he would rather wander the desert forever.

## Background and influences

The dead man's hand is a poker hand containing the black eights and aces. There is a nod to this in the World Ender music video, as it is a card hand shown in the bar Cobb Avery visits.

The album art for "Dead Man's Hand" shows dark road with a light coloured 50s looking car with the headlights on. This car is associated with Vernon in the music video for "The Night We Met."

In clips during the Whispering Pines sessions, Vernon encounters Johnnie’s body on the road and gets a shovel out of the car, fixing to bury him. When Vernon rolls the body over, Johnnie is still alive, to the apparent shock of Vernon.

In *Vide Noir* and *Products of the Universe*, Vernon's encounter with Redmayne is shown in greater detail, and his black brained state is revealed to the result of a forced overdose on the Vide Noir drug, which Redmayne claims Z'Oiseau uses to murder people.

Postcard XIX has a title in Hindi which reads "Dead Man's Hand" and contains music that became the song. It shows a man who starts a record playing, fixes his hair, adjusts his jacket, and puts on his hat before dancing away. The screen briefly reads "Dead Man's Hand" in Hindi. The camera pans down and a man is lying on the floor face down next to a bloodied knife.

## Annotated lyrics

The lyrics for *Strange Trails* were never officially released, these lyrics are a transcript:

Yellow lines in the dead of the night

I was heading back out west

Trying to keep my eyes open wide

I'd gone days without any rest

Saw him lying in the road looking bad about twenty yards ahead

You come back from a trip to the east

But you don't come back from the dead

Sure as hell he was dead as they come

And he was already starting to smell

Just a kid with his hair slicked back

And a knife tucked into his belt

Was he unforgiven or just tired of living a life

That never felt like his?

Though I was was worn out and weary, I thought I'd bury him

And lay his soul to rest out in the desert night

I laid him down in a grave in the sand

And he grabbed my arm with his dead man's hand

He said: "I know I'm dead but I don't wanna lie

In a grave out here where the coyotes cry

I stared right into the endless void

And I ain't going back if I got any choice

I know how to live, I don't know how to die

And there ain't no thrills in the afterlife

So lift me up out of here my friend

And I'll wander the night 'til the ages end."

Lit by the moon he walked through the sand

And he waved goodbye with his dead man's hand

He will roam forever, haunting the desert

He will roam forever, haunting the desert

## Potential lyrical references

Frequently, Lord Huron's songs explore similar themes, sometimes they have stories that are covered by more than one song. These lyrical connections are merely for reference:

1. ↑ Multiple songs reference living forever, including "The Man Who Lives Forever" and "Secret of Life."

## Sources

1. ↑ Lord Huron Fanclub Facebook Q&A 22. Q: "Is the dead guy from Dead Man’s Hand the World Ender?" Ben Schneider: "No, but he is a World Ender, that is, he is (was?) a member of the gang. He’s also the subject of the song 'Hurricane'."

"Love Like Ghosts" (Francine Lu)
"Until the Night Turns" (The Phantom Riders)
"**Dead Man's Hand**" (Buck Vernon)
"Hurricane (Johnnie's Theme)" (The Phantom Riders)

"La Belle Fleur Sauvage" (Remy Fusil)
"**Fool for Love**" (Buck Vernon)
"**The World Ender**" (The Phantom Riders)
"Meet Me in the Woods" (Francine Lu and Claude Fox)
"The Yawning Grave"

"Frozen Pines" (H.W. Justine)
"Cursed" (Buck Vernon)
"Way Out There"
"Louisa" (Buck Vernon)
"**The Night We Met**" (Francine Lu)