Riding the Freight Train

Song 251: Life imitates art, and Rolling Stone imitates... Dave? I've been doing this playlist for almost 2 years now, and the cover of the latest issue of RS (5/21/15) announces a Playlist Special that includes the likes of Brian Wilson, Bob Seger, Eric Church and Mavis Staples (all of whom have appeared on this playlist), each one naming their favorite records. Did Rolling Stone get the idea from me? I couldn't say for sure, but it does make me wonder. Either way, onward and upward to this week's playlist song Detroit City by Bobby Bare, written by Danny Dill and Mel Tillis. The summer before the Beatles rocked my world, a few folk and country records grabbed my attention in a major way, including this one, which I learned so well that I soon knew all the lyrics and could sing along with every line when the radio played it. In the early '80s, I happened to see Bobby Bare doing a short set for a Bread and Roses concert at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, and the female friend who sat next to me during the performance tolerated my singing along with Bobby until he got to the spoken part about how he rode the freight train north to Detroit City, at which point she insisted that I stop, so I did. Having learned those lines so well in the summer of 1963, I later wondered if the spoken part about riding the freight train might have influenced my writing of The Wanderer a half-dozen years later, in the fall of 1969. On a side note, I have an incidental connection with Mel Tillis due to a double-exposure that my friend Brian Groppe accidently took, and that I liked so much I used it on the inside of the Elder Street CD. Brian took a picture outside the Berkeley club called The Keystone which we played on this particular night, and then took a picture of our band on stage, with me at the mic playing acoustic guitar. The two images worked well together, and include a billboard above the club that announced an upcoming Mel Tillis show at a Reno hotel, so in this odd and distant way, Mel and I remain forever linked.