When Paula Cole released her breezy country/Americana ballad “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?” in 1996, she was irritated by the fact her fans missed one key attribute:

She’d meant it to be ironic.

This tidbit was largely overlooked by her fans, the critics, and even Wikipedia, which notes: "The first two verses explore infatuation and discovery; a bridge expresses disillusionment, and a final verse changes to despair.” (Kind of a metaphor for our entire music career, actually.) Of course, that’s Wikipedia for you - and looking at the rest of the entry, I’m hard-pressed to find anything else they got right about this song, either.

Much like our version.

So why the confusion? Maybe, back in the 90s, people didn’t know what irony was, until another song came along to explain it: apparently, it’s like rai-yeee-ain on your weddingggggg day. Glad we got that cleared up.

But here’s what I DON’T get. Back in the day - say around the time of Elvis - a whole lotta US states (including California) were actually part of Mexico. (We won them in a poker game.) Today, a lot of American citizens in those states can actually trace their lineage back to that time. So the fact that our government is deporting citizens from states they no longer like anyway, and which used to be Mexico, back to modern-day Mexico, smacks of irony to me.

~ Bob

Bad hombres:
M. Spaff Sumsion: Lyrics
Zelda Pinwheel: Lead and backing vocals
Chris Mezzolesta: Kokomo vocals, epilogue
Bob Emmet: Concept, all instruments, production, etcétera