Train Song

In Bluegrass, there are a lot of songs involving trains. I guess that makes sense given that Bluegrass came about during the 1930s when there were a lot of songs about hoboing and working on the railroad and all that.

I’ve been trying to write a train song for about a year now. I’ve had a story in my head about two people catching sight of each other at a train station and seeing their potential life together flash by in an instant. But then they get on different trains and never see each other again. At first, I started writing a short story and then I thought I’d simplify it into a song, but the song just wouldn’t be written. It refused. I came up with a couple different choruses that weren’t half bad, but I couldn’t come up with and verses.

The trouble was that I was trying to hard to tell a story when I was supposed to be writing a song. My best songs are the ones that only hint at the stories behind them, but actually deal with the emotions of the situation. The concept in my head was too complex to be told word for word in song form and yet I knew that it needed to be a song.

Finally, as I was driving this afternoon listening to the Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn album (which is by the way fantastic and you should stop everything right now to go listen to it.), a chorus popped into my head. I turned off the car stereo (sorry Bela and Abigail) and started singing this song and it came out almost perfect. Of course I was driving, so I couldn’t write it down and had to sing it over and over again until I got home so I wouldn’t forget it. Then I tried to write it down using the pen I always keep in the car, but the ink was frozen (Winter, I love you, but really? Did you really have to freeze my pen?), luckily I had a pencil as well, so I scribbled it down before I could forget it.

I took my new song inside and sang it to mom and she figured out what chords to play along to it and we tweaked a word here and there and voila! song written.

And now that I’ve written an entire blog about this song, I’m not going to post the lyrics or the rough recording we made of it because it’s not ready yet, but keep your ears open this summer for “Stop that Train!”

Thank you for reading.