August 24, 2003

My favorite train song is Neil Young's "Southern Pacific":

Down the mountainside
To the coastline
Past the angry tide
The mighty diesel whines

And the tunnel comes
And the tunnel goes
Around another bend
The giant drivers roll

I rode the highball
I fired the Daylight
When I turned 65
I couldn't see right

It was, "Mr. Jones
We've got to let you go
It's company policy
You've got a pension though."

Roll on
Southern Pacific
Roll on
On your silver rails
Roll on
Southern Pacific
On your silver rails
Through the moonlight

Also, regarding your post on the Acidman presidential platform, what is your policy regarding cats?

The Neil Young- trainsong-cats thread is completed by bringing it to your attention that there is a cat killing on Young's new album. An FBI agent gets scratched on the leg by a cat while tossing the apartment of one of the main characters (Sun Green, who later marries "Earth Brown"). The agent shoots the cat and leaves it "in a pool of blood at the foot of Sun Green's bed".

You have my vote for the White House as long cats are banned from it and I get invited to the drunken parties

Don't forget David Alan Coe's "You Don't Have to Call Me Darlin', Darlin'", which contains what some consider the finest lyric in C&W music: the "Perfect Country Western song." In one lyric there are references to Mom, trains, pick-up trucks, prison, and gettin' drunk!

I was drunk the day my Ma got out of prison
So I went to pick her up in the rain
By the time I could get to the station in my pick-up truck
She got run over by a damned ol' train

Joan Baez's City of New Orleans is Kroger muzak now. So much for songs of rebellion.

Steve Goodman can take credit for penning two of those: "City of New Orleans" *and* the made-famous-by-Coe "You Never Even Call Me By My Name."
I'd have "Waiting for a Train," by the great singing brakeman Jimmie Rodgers, in there myself.
All around the water tank,
Waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home
Sleeping in the rain...

Gladys Knight and the Pips- "Midnight Train to Georgia"

Doobie Brothers- "Long Train Running"

I wouldn't say any of these are necessarily better, but here's a few

Kansas City Southern - Pure Prairie League
Just Like This Train - Joni Mitchell
Last Train For Glory - Arlo Guthrie
Boxcar's My Home - Willie Nelson
Let The Train Whisle Blow - Johnny Cash
Love Train - O'Jay's
Casey Jones - Grateful Dead
Big Freight Train Carry Me Home - Boxcar Willie

geez...i cant believe no one came up with

"train kept a rollin" by aerosmith and a bunch of others including little jeffy beck

and how about "driver 8" by REM?

cant believe i almost forgot that one myself

"Rainy Night in Georgia" should hold an honorary place anyway. Especially, since we have had a hell of a lot of rainy nights (and days) in Georgia of late.

Plus it's a damn beautiful song that speaks straight thru one's soul!

How about 'Wabash Cannonball'.
and does anyone remember one called 'Grand Canyon Line'. The only time I remember hearing it was back in the '60s. Burl Ives sang it, I think.

Well, forgive me for suggesting a "chick" song in here, but I just love "Midnight Train to Georgia." I mean, it's got a train in the dang title, does that count?

Hard to believe that no one has mentioned "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" ... The Band's version -- I always had a hard time believing Joan Baez when she'd sing 'Virgil Caine is my name..."

Johnny Cash just plain rocks. One of my favorites, by far.

I also recommend "Casey Jones", but the version done by Cash.

How about the version of Casey Jones by the Grateful Dead?

Drivin' that train, high on cocaine,
Casey Jones you'd better watch your speed...

Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull

Joan- already got ya covered. Scroll up.

Rock Island Line's a goodun no one's mentioned.

Orange Blossom Special and Wabash Cannonball may be my faves. OK, OK, D A Coe's is high on my list, too. Anyone remember Dizzy Dean singing Wabash on the Game (Saturday baseball) of the Week, every week?

Blue Train by Linda Ronstadt on her album Feels Like Home. As haunting and sad as her voice.

"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"-Hank Williams Sr.

Heathens..has everyone forgotten Chattanooga Choo Choo? Well pardon me boys.

Wabash Cannonball.......

If you like trains, you gotta check this site out:

www.wtv-zone.com

No "Midnight Train to Georgia" Oh wait you're already there. Nevermind.

How about "Like Desparados Waitin on a Train" Johnny, Willy,and Waylon?

All around the water tank - Jimmy Rodgers

Mystery Train - Elvis (with Scotty & Bill)

I like David Hines' submission. One of my favorite songs!

I think we went through this list last year....
Choo Choo Ch'boogie
Freight Train Boogie
Steel Rails
Atchison Topeka And The Santa Fe
Old Train
Daddy What's A Train?
Last Hobo

The Last Hobo is one that touches me and can reduce me to tears at times.

"Train,train" By Blackfoot
"Tuesday's Gone" Lynyrd Skynyrd
"Interstate Love Song" Stone Temple Pilots

Definitely have to agree with "Waiting for a Train" by Jimmie Rodgers as being a kick ASS train song.....not too hard to play on guitar either

Now listen to the jingle
The rumble and the roar
As she glides along the woodlands
Through the hills and by the shore
Hear the mighty rush of the engine
Hear that lonesome hobo squall
As he travels through the jungles on
The Wabash Cannonball

Rob, I can't believe that's not on your list.

"Me and Bobby McGee" has a line about a train, right there at the beginning...

I'm surprised that, among rock-n-roll train songs, no one has mentioned Adrian Belew's "The Rail Song". Excellent guitar work and lyrics:

I recall as a boy we would hop the freights
wasn't nothin' but a kick back then
there was no better thrill for my anxious heart
than a long flatcar
headin' out of the yard
and I knew even then she was in my blood
like the time when I first hired on
and the fireman laughed at my bony nose
but he tossed me a cap
said GM&O
and I was a man...

I gave her my best years
well, what can you do but laugh
I don't expect she'll ever be coming back

When we climbed up the great Appalachians
her engines would be raging like hell
then we'd come back down to the rising towns
where the cattle stare
in the frozen air
For me there nothing more sacred
than the beautiful sound she'd make
her long blue signal blowin' deep in the night,
it would get to me there,
it would get to me there
Now I'm afraid...

Afraid of these silent hours
awake underneath my old cap
I don't expect she'll ever be coming back

Well, I watched the beginning of the end for her
when I saw my first jet airplane
flying high overhead like a bird of prey
while the mighty fell
in the land of the brave
Now I'm alone.

I am shocked! Shocked I tell you! has anyone hear ever heard of a band called Blackfoot? Their singer, Rick Medlocke, son of Shorty Medlock, started out as a singer for Lynyrd Skynyrd....
Anyway, they had a tune on their Blackfoot Strikes album (yes, album - 8-track too) called Train Train. It featured Shorty on harp.
There's a Canadian act name o' Taj Mahal that had a tune about a train - can't remember the tilte, but the verse starts off with, "She caught the katey & left me a mule to ride..." The 'katey' (sp?) is a train or so I'm told.
& since we spoke briefly of Skynyrd, how about Tuesday's Gone With the Wind? damn if that ain't a train song, & the progression is quite elequont for a tune that sounds so simple. Plus the orchestration always seemd 'just right' for the feeling they were going for.
& speaking of Southern rock bands, y'all ever hear of Marshall Tucker? They had a nice little ditty called "Can't Ya See".

ah, but probably the most endearing tune about trains (at least for me) was written by this fellow in Charleston, SC around 1929. I knew the tune well when i was younger cause my grandpa would sing it quite often.

I believe it's called "I'm Feeling Blue" but it might be "The Sun's Gonna Shine Through My Door Someday"

A simple blues progression: E - B - E - A - E -B - E - E - repeat
The lyrics (best I can remember)

" I'm feelin' blue , but I won't be blue always - cause the sun's gon shine through my door somedays

I'm gon lay my head, down on the railroad tie - let the 4:15 ease my worried mind

Said I'm feelin' blue, but I won't be blue no mo' - cause the sun's gon shine through my back door"

& honorable mention would go to Steve Vai & Rye Cooder for their work in the movie Crossraods (no, not the Britney Spears flick). wanna talk about trains in music? then fats forward to the head cutters duel scene.

I gotta nominate Steve Earle's "Texas Eagle." Absolutely great song. The man's politics give me the hives, but the song's damn near perfect.

Y'all forgot one of the best: "Drivin' Wheel" by Tom Rush.

How about:

The Monkey and the Engineer by the Grateful Dead?

"Midnight Special" by Huddie Ledbetter. A train song AND a jail song.

Bejus! I can't believe I left "Wabash Cannonball" off the list and I can't believe that anyone else ever heard of Tom Rush singing "Driving Wheel."

Can't say much in a phone call, baby
Well, you know how it is
I need to tell you one short thing
Won't you listen to this?
Just called to tell you that I love you
Just called to tell you how I feel.

I feel like some old engine
Done lost my drivin' wheel"

One of my very favorite songs, period, especially when performed by Kevin Welch...

The Train to Birmingham (John Hiatt)

I’m ridin’ on this train, drinkin’ whisky for the pain
just another good old boy headin’ home
and every town I see seems to take a part of me
that’s the price that you pay when you roam

I got holes in both my shoes, and a guitar full of blues
and a one-way ticket for my remedy
it’s the same old lonesome song I’ve been singin’ all night long
hey Porter, are we out of Tennessee?

Every year I ride this train, to Alabama in the rain
when I get that lonesome feelin’ in my bones
I never get to Birmingham, but gettin’ there ain’t the plan
I just like the feel of goin’ home

Oh yes, I cry when I have to, and I lie when I can
but I’ll die a little slower,on the train to Birmingham

Big Rock Candy Mountains

It probably doesn't qualify as a 'train song' as it is not primarily about trains, but it does mention trains. Besides, I love that song and now I'll have it stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains you never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains"

Our band, "Blank Slate", performs a more obscure song, entitled LAST TRAIN FROM POOR VALLEY, written by June Carter Cash and performed in the past by Norman Blake.

how about heartbreak station by cinderella i know they are heavy metal but this song really kicks butt and how about crazytrain by ozzy osbourne

I remember a great Phil Harris song that begins:

That big eight-wheeler comin' down the track
Means that your lovin' daddy ain't a-comin' back

-- hence, a train song! And a great one at that.

My goodness, we'd certainly have to include Johnny Cash's "Hey, Porter" and "Train of Love." And how about "In the Pines," too?

The longest train I ever saw,
Rolled down that Georgia line.
Engine passed at six o'clock,
Caboose rolled by at nine.

"Hobo Bill's Last Ride" deserves to be in there somewhere, too.

I'd like to nominate songs by the best band ever, Little Feat. Red Streamliner (Featuring Doobie Brothers backing vocals), New Dehli Freight Train (apparently originally done by Terry Allen), Two Trains (the trains are actually metaphores, but hey), Lafayette Railroad (no lyrics), Lonesome Whistle (Hank Williams/Jimmie Davis cover), Loco Motives "steel wheel's singin' such a lonesome song, engines whinin' been gone too long"

I hate to upset all the David Allen Coe and Cash fans , but how about Leeann Rimes with "One Way Ticket (Because I Can)." It may not be specifically about a train but it definately has " train" in its lyrics. You know-- I've got a one way ticket on a west bound train. To see how far I can go.---or something like that. Also--Hurt Train by Brooks and Dunn. "Ridin on a hurt train. mmm-makin tracks. Riding on a hurt train,ain't no turning back. 100 tons of cold steel rusting in the rain. Singin of the rolling wheels callin out her name. Whistle keeps blowing that high and lonesome sound.

I hate to upset all the David Allen Coe and Cash fans , but how about Leeann Rimes with "One Way Ticket (Because I Can)." It may not be specifically about a train but it definately has " train" in its lyrics. You know-- I've got a one way ticket on a west bound train. To see how far I can go.---or something like that. Also--Hurt Train by Brooks and Dunn. "Ridin on a hurt train. mmm-makin tracks. Riding on a hurt train,ain't no turning back. 100 tons of cold steel rusting in the rain. Singin of the rolling wheels callin out her name. Whistle keeps blowing that high and lonesome sound.

myself and john newbraugh[of nbt records wva] who has 14 of my new songs on ascap . titles; ghost train/the train ride/the heavenly railroad/hobos and gods train/my ohio blues/the last two are an autobiography of my life in ohio and wva[1946era] my songs have whistles too. [e mail me asap]
Rex Foutch & Rex West

people get ready - curtis mayfield
i'm a train - albert hammond
hobo's lulluby - guthrie
love train - o jay's
stop that train - marley
locomotion - little eva/grand funk
mean old frisco - john hammond
ridin' on the L & M - john mayall
land of hopes and dreams - springsteen