On May 19, 2008, at 6:43 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote: > Hey Vaj, yes thanks for the link. I haven't taken the time to really > check it out. Is RL playing an acoustic guitar? My favorite CDs are > his first two on acoustic.
This is electric. Trancey electric. He loves the drone. So many hard rock acts stole this schtick. There are others considered classics on dime I haven't downloaded, but they are highly rated, Holland tour IIRC. > I never learned Freight Train before but I am building a show for a > museum with a train theme. There are so many interesting references > to trains both physical and as metaphor in early blues. So it was > natural to go back and take another look at Elizabeth's famous piece. > I had sort of categorized it as light weight folk music before, and > was completely blown away at how I had missed the whole point of the > song, that she is fleeing! The second verse is such a poetic way to > convey that information which is in such dramatic contrast to the > bouncy beat. I find it doubtful that she penned that verse when she > was 11 as the Wiki claims. I have heard her give different accounts > of why she wrote it too. I have such a new found respect for that song > and am busy doing reps on the old school cord shapes necessary to play > it. I'm not trying it her way, upside down, thats for sure! The train metaphor is just so deep, you just can't help yourself. I know the feeling. > It is amazing how close we were to never hearing her music at all! > So > many of the people in the folk revival were snatched from obscurity. > My life would look very different today without that revival! Well I'm more the folkie, so I hear a different subset. But a lot of the classics seem to still hit downeast believe it or not and we occasionally just seem to run into these folks. Right before he died, my wife and I ran into Gatemouth on the way to the Salt Lake City smoking area (with PBS film crew in tow). Last I ran into him he was walking off the bus in Ellsworth, Maine... Gone now.
