Tag: folk song

Songs to help you on your way

 

A couple of songs to help you on your way. Here’s Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad, an old folk song, probably a hundred years. Woody Guthrie put his words to it in the 1930’s, but the song was not a new one then. Bumba and Maybank have updated the lyrics for your 2015 listening pleasure with corrections for inflation and a nod to the consumer price index, but the message of the song remains true. Have a good day, hang in there, and keep it movin’.

“Keep it movin’, buddy”. That’s what they say. Keep movin’

Keep rollin with the punches,

Go easy on the lunches.

Keep rockin to the rhythm.

And hold the pessimism

Find your inspiration

Waitin at the station

Hop that train

Get on that bus

Don’t look back

And try to stay out of jail.

 

Here’s another song to help you on your way. This song provides a goal, a destination: Jerusalem, the city of gold, of light. Oh What a Beautiful City, a Negro spiritual, perhaps two hundred years old, remains a beautiful song. There are a lot of ways to play it. I love Sonny Terry’s version the best. Check out Sonny Terry’s Oh What a Beautiful City. Meanwhile you’ll have to settle for Bumba and Maybank as recorded last night.

 

That evening train again

This is a song, an American image that keeps coming around for me. The train. The railroad. The days of glory. The good old railroad songs. The Wabash Cannonball. The days of the good old America as it entered the 20th century and the age of miracles. Riding those rails. Singing them railroad songs. Whatever happened to the railroad?

“It’s a long steel rail and a short cross tie. I’m on my way back home.” from Streamline Cannonball and a couple of other songs)

Here’s one I’m stuck on. I call it the evening train blues or the eastbound train.