Road songs

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: RTim
Date: 14 Dec 18 - 10:36 PM

Down the Long Road - Bob Davenport on his recording named for the song.
Topic Records 12TS274 (LP, UK, 1975)

Down the long road a soldier came a walking
Back from the long wars no more for to roam.
When he spied a young woman
Come walking towards him
Singing to herself as she made her way home.

His hand touched his cap as he stepped up to her
Are you going as far as the mill there ahead?
She said that she was, he asked to walk with her,
So sweetly she smiled, indeed you may she said.

For several long years that smile he remembered
What is you name please tell me my dear?
Mary Johnsons my name, my man is the miller,
And father he’ll be by the end of the year.

The soldiers face was burn brown
From the hot sun of Indie,
But it saddened & paled when he heard what she said.
For this lass when he left had been his own true love,
And now here she was to his young brother wed.

Your husband it seems is the man I am seeking,
For it’s news of his brother that I’ve come to tell.
He was my close comrade through manys the battle
And together we were on the day that he fell.

His last dying words he said go seek my brother
Give him this watch, this gold ring also,
Tell him to look after my own darling Mary
The girl I’d have married when the long war was o’er.

When she took the gold watch,
How deep she was sobbing
She leaned on the dyke, so pale & so wan.
So much he could tell her of her own died true lover,
When she looked up to ask him
The soldier was gone.

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: theleveller
Date: 15 Dec 18 - 10:54 AM

Blimey, I have no recollection of starting this thread 10 years ago. Probably my favourite British road song is Justin Sullivan's Tales of the Road from his album Navigating by the Stars. It's the only song I know that mentions Ferrybridge Power Station cooling towers - an iconic landmark for Yorkshire folk returning up the A1 from darn sarf.

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: GUEST,GUEST, Larry Poole
Date: 17 Dec 18 - 11:12 PM

Havent seen this song mentioned or ever heard anyone else sing it. Jeff (JD Hawk) would go out on Royal street, New Orleans (Circa Mardi Gras/spring 1975) thrown down his cowboy hat and sing this song and soon get a good sized crowd. Been wondering what happened to Jeff since then (43 yrs ago!):

Lonesome Strangers Blues
Jeff (JD Hawk)

Won't you help me down the highway I can’t make it anymore
My aching head is tired and my feet are sore
I slept out by the highway, last night in the pouring rain
And this western wind has left me a stranger on the road

CHORUS
And I guess Ill always be a stranger
And I’ll just be some old lonesome fool, thumbing through.
But I could fill your ears with a song to fill the tears
Of every other lonesome strangers blues

Way up on a mountain, I met a Carolina girl
And the way we loved, we rocked the whole damn world
But our love to soon grew cold and those mountain towns get old
And that western wind has left me a stranger on the road

The folks I used to play with, they’ve all gone here and there,
But it sure was good to have those songs to play.
Then our stories all got told and those country songs get old
And that western wind has left me a stranger on the road.

Lare
(Jeff also wrote alot of other songs, "Orgy in Missoula" comes to mind.)

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Dec 18 - 09:28 AM

This is one of my father's stereotype heather and haggis 'road' songs, which (usually end verse edited out, sometimes beginning with the chorus) has been on recordings and DVD's. Much use of bonnie this and that, also artistic license. Inverness is no longer a town, but classed formally as a City, somewhat wrecking the premise and consigning it to being anachronistic.


HOME TO INVERNESS (C) 1969 words and music Stewart Ross/EMI Music Publishing

I have wandered all around, and much beauty I have found, and I've seen the finest cities of this earth,
but where ever I have been, there's no place that I have seen,
like the bonnie, bonnie town of Inverness.

Chorus: O'er the Highland hills and bens,
through the valleys and the glens...
I will take once more the road that I love best.
O'er the lonely heather moor, I will wander as before,
On the road that leads me home to Inverness.

I would like to sit and rest, by the bonnie River Ness,
just to sit and watch its waters calm and still,
where the islands lie serene, mid the fields of bonnie green,
and the castle stands so high upon the hill

Chorus
Chorus: O'er the Highland hills and bens,
through the valleys and the glens...
I will take once more the road that I love best.
O'er the lonely heather moor, I will wander as before,
On the road that leads me home to Inverness.


I would roam the 'sandy braes', as I did in bygone days,
and I'd watch the boats go sailing down the Firth.
Those these days may ne'er return, in my heart I'll always yearn..
for the bonnie, bonnie town that gave me birth.

Chorus: O'er the Highland hills and bens,
through the valleys and the glens...
I will take once more the road that I love best.
O'er the lonely heather moor, I will wander as before,
On the road that leads me home to Inverness.
On the road that leads me home to Inverness.

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Dec 18 - 09:30 AM

An instrumental tune with a story behind it - Donald Shaw's fiddle march "Calum's Road". There's a book about it.

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: GUEST,Terray
Date: 18 Dec 18 - 09:36 AM

Pad the Road Wi Me- by Malinky

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: GUEST,Wendy M. Grossman
Date: 19 Dec 18 - 02:40 PM

Bill Steele - "Gasoline Gypsies".

wg

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 20 Dec 18 - 01:59 AM

The Road To Ronderlin;
Matthews' Southern Comfort – Later That Same Year, released 1970

Oh the night it is so very wild
And I fear the mist is closing in
Should we hesitate once more
Then our natural life is o'er
And we'll never find the road to Ronderlin

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: Genie
Date: 12 Jul 19 - 02:10 PM

The Coming Of The Roads

Sometimes Let A Back Road Take You Home

(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66

Subject: RE: Road songs
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 15 Jul 19 - 03:08 PM

From "The Galway Shawl" - I took the road to Donegal.