Lyr Add: The Mother Road (Kevin Welch, Alan Rhody)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Mother Road
From: Stewie
Date: 04 Oct 04 - 12:05 AM

An MP3 of Rhody's recording may been found on this page: CLICK.

--Stewie.

Subject: Lyr Add: THE MOTHER ROAD (Kevin Welch/Alan Rhody)
From: Stewie
Date: 03 Oct 04 - 11:55 PM

This was brought to mind by the Route 66 thread that is currently on foot - a beaut song that doesn't appear to be in the forum nor available on the Net:

THE MOTHER ROAD
(Kevin Welch/Alan Rhody)

There used to be a main street 'cross the country
And that good ol' road would take you all the way
From Clark and Ogden Street up in Chicago
To Lincoln and Olympic in LA

Now I was raised up somewhere in the middle
Me and daddy'd watch 'em all roll through town
I saw licence plates from states I'd only dreamed of
They'd just wave goodbye and put that hammer down

Chorus:
Well, the restless and the desperate
The young ones and the old
All together like a river flowed
Lord, I hope they got where they were goin'
All the children of the mother road

The dust bowl Okies stopped in Arizona
To trade their family things for gasoline
Just to find themselves outnumbered by the thousands
Who'd already travelled down that road of dreams

When the war was over all the baby boomers
Loaded up their cars and they grabbed their kids
Just to count the miles and cuss those big freight liners
Across twenty-two hundred miles of Route 66

Chorus

Now the hot top is just ranch roads and runways
And a way of life for some folks is all but gone
You can almost see the ghost towns from the fast lane
Of this super highway we're all a-ridin' on

Chorus

Copyright 1985 Welch/Rhody Cross Keys Pub. Co. Inc. (CBS Music Group) ASCAP.

Source: from the lyrics booklet accompanying Kevin Welch 'Same' Reprise CD 26171-2. A recording by co-author, Alan Rhody, may be found on Various Artists 'The Songs of Route 66: Music from the all-American Highway' Lazy SOB Recordings SOB66.

--Stewie.