Here are several representative Buddy Tabor songs. He is a prolific writer but we have learned to eagerly anticipate each one. For the last three or four years he has had a standing gig at Folsom Prison (on the last tour, he did two there) and some of his songs come from that experience. Buddy quips that happy songs depress him, and that of the 150 songs he has recorded, four are happy.

He does have some though that are heart warming. Like 'She Walks in Beauty', one he wrote about his Navajo mother in law.

FATHER'S GRAVE
(Buddy Tabor, Juneau, Alaska)

My father was born in the hills of West Virginia
Rode the coal cars through the train yards, Went to work at seventeen
He married Mama late in life, they gave birth to five children
You know hard times was all they ever seen
That old car he drove made him ashamed but to us it was a limousine
Took the kids out a-riding right after Sunday School
Buy a watermelon and stop somewhere and eat it in those picnic chairs
Spit the seeds out at each other, spit the seeds up in the air

We did not know that we was poor, to us kids it did not matter
But to him it broke his heart, cracked in pieces as it shattered
Catch the lightning bugs in mason jars as it got dark in our back yard
In the house that we grew up in that our father never owned

Late at night when the wind would blow and rattle on the window
In this rundown house he paid the rent for 40 some odd years
And though he worked hard all his life and he never drank or gambled
He never owned that home that he dreamed through silver tears

We did not know that we was poor, to us kids it did not matter
But to him it broke his heart, cracked in pieces as it shattered
Catch the lightning bugs in mason jars as it got dark in our back yard
In the house that we grew up in that our father never owned

When the old man died he didn't have a nickel to his name
All the kids pitched in to pay for his funeral
Mama's sister donated a little plot of land
To lay his body down to rest in peaceful sleep
And it was six feet deep and four feet wide and we covered it with flowers
And thanked our father there for all he'd done
For at last he had a piece of land he could call his own
And no one to collect the rent on his bleached out tired old bones
Tired old bones, tired old bones
And at least he had a piece of land he could call his own

---

HIGHWAY SONG
(Buddy Tabor)
I had a girl up in Denver. She had the keys to my heart
But that highway called to me. Lord, it tore us apart
I guess she's still up in Denver. Never seen her again
Cause when you're out on this highway you're just like the wind

Roll on, roll on. Sing a highway song
Here one day and the next day you're gone
And you roll and you ramble like a leaf on the wind
You pack up your suitcase. You're gone again.

This old highway's like morphine, it can kill all your pain
That dirty old asphalt it runs through your vein
Like a gambler with his cards or a drunkard his wine
The wheels spin around and you burn up your time

I've been through your towns where they don't know your name
And after awhile they all look the same
I ain't got no friends and I ain't got no home
Cause when you're out on this highway you're out here alone

That broken white line, it runs through my soul
And I'll follow its path 'til the day I grow old
And the day I grow old I'll lie down by this road
I'll lay down my burdens, I'll lay down my load

---

MILES TO GO
(Buddy Tabor)

There's a line that's drawn through
This life of beauty and tears
Sometimes it seems so far away,
Sometimes it seems so near
When the spirit and flesh are torn
Between Earth and the sky
As we go through the days and the hours
And the minutes of our lives

You may be weary,
You may be feeling low
Your life might be out of line
But you still got miles to go
Miles to go, miles to go.
Between the earth and the sky
And the moment we die,
We still got miles to go

There's questions we'll never answer,
There's things we'll never know
Searching for that state of grace
Out here on this open road
There's a reason for everything,
Sometimes you just let it go
Between the earth and the sky
And the moment we die
We still got miles to go

Beyond this great horizon
At the end of this endless road
We'll stand in the sun to see what we've done
And we won't have miles to go
You won't be weary,
You won't be feeling low
Your life will finally be in line
And you won't have miles to go