Ball of Wax 41 Songs: Travis Champ – The Yellow Rose of Borges (demo)

Travis Champ’s “The Yellow Rose of Borges” is, at first glance, a simple cowboy song. Champ’s baritone drawl and campfire strumming makes it immediately familiar and, if you’re not really listening, easy to gloss over as yet more Americana aural wallpaper to go with the belt buckle you found in a thrift store driving through Idaho and the boots you bought that time you went to Austin (man, the tacos there were amazing). But then there are the lyrics. “The Yellow Rose of Borges” is filled with top flight frontier surrealism, like if Tom Verlaine had been raised on Townes Van Zandt. There’s some Silver Jews-esque absurdism (“bribe some mattress with some cash”) and a choice Dylan allusion (“up on housing project hill”) among any number of really nice lines to transform this number from a perfectly nice ditty to meaty musical text.