The Last Six: Like a Train

       A quick note, I'll be taking the weekend off from blogging.  I'll be back on Tuesday through Thrusday with the last three songs from February!  Now, onward.

       To be a real folk singer there are a couple of songs you have to write.  
       One of them is the drinking song or a song about alcohol in general.  It's best if in this song the drinking has left the protagonist of the song in utter ruin.  The person's drinking should be like a crack that runs across a person's soul.  However if you want to just write about a good night out that's, well, ok.   But your not a folk singer if you don't sing about drinking at some point.  Preferrably whiskey.   Rum drinks don't count, unless you're singing about pirates, and then you're likely singing a sea shanty which is a different kind of thing.  
       Another song you have to write is the murder ballad.  People have to die in your songs occasionally if your a folk singer.   If you can kill more than one person in a song even better.   Is the murder based on historical fact?   Great!  The unintentional death of a friend by an ironic misfortune is a fine substitute for murder as well.  But murder is really the way to go.
      Finally, you have to sing about trains at some point which I'm not sure I'd ever done in a song of mine.  However I've covered both drinking and murder and two out of three ain't bad**.  So here's the train song I wrote last month.   I'm not sure it's folk.   I'll let y'all decide.  It occurrs to me though, I should really try to write a song with all three in there.  It would the folk trifecta.

**Meat Loaf will never be a folk singer.   It doesn't matter how much drinking and killing and riding on trains he does. 

Anyway, here's the notebook page I started with for this one.



And here's what i finished with:

Maybe we’re all hobos
Looking for our way
Running down that track
Trying to jump the freight

And maybe we’re all conductors
Calling out the names
Of the towns at the depot
That We’ll never see again

Sometimes I think things are connected
Like a train
Like a train
Sometimes I think my days are connected
Like a train
Like a train
Rolling down the track

Maybe we’re all riders
With our tickets in our hands
Looking out the windows
Wondering at what station we’ll land

And maybe we’re all steam men
shoveling in more coal
working hard to stoke the fire
And make the damn thing go