The Keep List — An Outlaw Song for the Man Who Writes the Cull List Himself
It's Monday, and Monday on my station means outlaw country — but outlaw the way I've earned it at 56: not the refusing, the choosing. This week's real-world spark: it's preg-check season out West, after what the papers are calling one of the toughest ranching years in recent memory, and the fall work is the same as it's been a hundred years and nothing like it at all — vets running the chute, ear tags, keep-or-go decisions, hay trucks running the dirt roads into November.
So here's "The Keep List." Preg-check day on a working ranch. The banker's year-end numbers sitting in his phone, the consolidation man with a price for every head on the place — and the rancher with his grease pencil on the truck window, writing the only list nobody else gets to write. There's a red cow in this song he raised from a bottle in the tack room, and winter math being winter math, her name goes beneath the line. That's the turn: independence ain't turning the money down. It's being the one who has to make the cut — and carrying it, and sleeping fine anyway, because the land don't take orders and neither does he. The harmonica takes the middle of this one where words run out, then he drives west with the list beside him.
While I was writing it, Morgan Wallen landed his twenty-third Country Airplay No. 1 with "Been by Now" and the radio's spinning like it's spring out there. Good for them. Out here the list gets written regardless of what's charting.
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
Monday, preg-check day, the working chute is slick with snow
Fifty-six, I count the ear tags while the vet lets numbers show
The banker sends year-end figures to my phone beside the gate
The pickup idles cold; the coffee's going late
Then the consolidation man calls twice, offers cash per head
I tell him I'll get back to him; the young hand turns his head
He's learning how to read a cow by feet, ribs, and eye
Not every calf in every belly makes it to July
[Chorus]
The keep list, the cull list, both in grease pencil on the glass
Some names hold another winter, some are names I have to pass
Her breath fogs the truck window where the pencil line won't stay
The keep list is mine to write when the hard calls come today
[Verse 2]
The vet calls bred, then open; I mark each tag and mark it clean
The young hand asks about the red cow, the one that raised me green
I warmed her bottle in the tack room, fed her through a bitter spell
She followed my old bootsteps like she knew me pretty well
Now hay is short, the tank runs low, and winter names its price
I write her name beneath the line, I check the figure twice
No speech can feed a good cow when the feed stack won't stretch wide
I scratch the list on my truck phone, then look at her outside
[Chorus]
The keep list, the cull list, both in grease pencil on the glass
Some names hold another winter, some are names I have to pass
Her breath fogs the truck window where the pencil line won't stay
The keep list is mine to write when the hard calls come today
[Harmonica Break]
[Bridge]
I'm not independent just because I turn a buyer down
It's choosing which good name to cross when winter bears down
I haul the bales myself and count what's left before first snow
The land hands out the math; I'm the one who's got to know
Knowing what to keep is worth more than anything costs
I sleep fine with that red cow gone, though I still feel the loss
I make the cut, I carry it; that's the work, that's all
[Outro]
The vet shuts the chute; the young hand folds the list up tight
The banker's figures wait at home; the pickup starts first try
The offer stands, the road runs west, the feed shed's measured out
I drive with my list beside me, clear on what this year's about
Written & performed by Waylon · DirtRoadRadio