WEDDING VOW
Wedding ring, wedding vow, whose bed do you sleep in now? I tried my best to be good to you. I was faithful, I was true. But it wasn't long till you began to stray from your sacred vows of your wedding day. Wedding ring, wedding vow, whose bed do you sleep in now? It isn't me. I remember how we used to be. I remember who we used to be. Loving you, you loving me. Now I see your lips move across his face. Another man in my place. The deepest wound, the deepest cut, my virgin bride is anything but. Wedding ring, wedding vow, whose bed do you sleep in now? It isn't me. I remember how we used to be. Someday soon I'm gonna leave for good. I'll cast you out like I know I should. I'll say enough of this deceitful life. This broken home, this faithless wife. Wedding ring, wedding vow, whose bed do you sleep in now?
This is a song of bitterness and betrayal, a song where bluegrass meets the blues. Unlike most of my songs, the elements of this one came to me all together, chorus, tune, attitude and sound, as I was walking through one of the terminals in the Atlanta Airport. Who knows why, or how, on any level: the song is most certainly not about me or my beloved and loving wife Melanie, or anyone I know for that matter. The rawness of the emotions stayed with it all the way through the recording. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
Levon
When I heard you I was 17, living in a musical dream, with Cripple Creek in sight. When they drove old Dixie down, I cried, with your voice of wounded pride ringing clear into the night. Levon, I'm leaving' on the train, down to Danville in the rain, till they tear up the tracks again. Levon, I was only 17, living in a musical dream. Carry it on, carry it on. Carry it on, carry it on again. Levon, was that the sacred harp you played? All the music that you made still echoes through the haze. Levon, you made the trip to heaven and to hell, till standing by the well, we will lift the long black veil. Levon was the best I ever heard. I strained for every word from that voice so pure and plain. Levon, I hear your voice again, and in the years that still remain. Carry it on, carry it on. Carry it on, carry it on again. Levon, you're back upon the stage. Levon, after all the tears of rage. Levon, the whisper in the pines, like a voice from olden times, is asking you to play. Drink a toast of strawberry wine. The music is so darn fine. The weight is lifted clear. And when you paint your masterpiece we shall, all of us, be released, for a Midnight Ramble here. Levon, I see Big Pink in sight, when the children go to bed tonight, all the glory will be heard. Yes, I think I'm gonna see Big Pink tonight and everything will be all right. Carry it on, carry it on. Carry it on, carry it on again.
This song is about (and in part written to) Levon Helm, the great rock and roll singer and drummer. Levon had an astounding career as a musician, band leader, pioneer of rock and roll, film actor, author, and owner of a recording studio. But for me, and people of my generation, his years as the drummer and one of the singers with The Band in the late '60s and early '70s define his most profound contributions to and influences on our lives, the way we see and experience life. This song started coming to me a couple of years ago as I sat at the piano after coming back from seeing Levon, recovered from cancer of the vocal chords and joined by Emmy Lou Harris and others, create one of the most beautiful and spiritually powerful evenings of music I have witnessed, at a Midnight Ramble in his Woodstock studio. For those who know The Band, the lyrical references and vocal phrasing throughout this tune will be very familiar. I hope they will convey the sense of profound gratitude, respect, and admiration, tinged with a bit of yearning left in the wake of the passage of time, that I, and a whole generation of musicians and music lovers, feel for Levon Helm. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
black hills ranger
I left my home in Alamance County, 1875. The news was gold. There weren't no stalling. All I could hear was them Black Hills calling, calling me to come alive. I left my woman and my dog named Willie, left my boyhood friends. I left my name to be eternally cussed, all for the sake of some golden dust. Never went home again. No, this wasn't what I came after. Pockets full of hunger, ears full of laughter. Yes, I am the Black Hills Ranger, destined to be everybody's stranger. Somebody please lend me a dollar, I can hardly stand. Spent last night at a gambler's table, drinking from a bottle with a poison label, waiting for a golden hand. No, this wasn't what I came after, pockets full of hunger, ears full of laughter. Yes, I am the Black Hills Ranger, destined to be everybody's stranger.
I wrote this song many years ago as a young man - earnestly playing guitar and casually reading American History, and putting into songs the pictures I saw in my mind's eye while reading that history. This one tells the story of a man who leaves his home in rural North Carolina, leaves everything behind - family, loved ones, obligations, responsibilities - and heads west to the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory in the Gold Rush of 1875. Seeking adventure and his fortune, he ultimately finds a life of lonely disillusion and dissolution. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
rising tide
They told us we should leave our homes, and everything inside, everything we owned. But we didn't have nowhere to go, and no way to get there anyhow. We don't have no credit cards, no bank accounts, no trucks, no cars. Down here we live from check to check, and it wasn't pay day yet. And there weren't no van, there weren't no train, no caravan on the interstate. There weren't no plan, there weren't no bus, the government, they just forgot about us. He don't, he don't, he don't know. He don't know. Everybody tells me so. He don't, he don't, he don't know. When the storm blew past, they all breathed their sighs. They didn't tell us when the Lake done rise. And topped the levee and undermined the wall. They didn't come to get us, didn't bother at all. And the water rushed down like a ton of bricks, and crushed our homes like they were made of sticks. And it swirled down here twenty feet below the level of the sea. We rushed to the tops of our homes that night, to our attics and roofs, paralyzed by fright. The power was gone and the dark complete, and we all prepared to die. We prayed to Jesus to save our souls, to watch for our loved ones and keep them whole. And when the morning came, we lived. He don't, he don't, he don't know. He don't know. Everybody tells me so. He don't, he don't, he don't know. Daylight brought the horror of what had come to pass. Our lives as we knew them were just so much trash. When a person dies, her body floats, when a person dies, his body bloats. We sang the tune; we hit all the notes. But this rising tide don't lift all boats. The president flew down to survey our fate. A dollar short, a couple days late. He talked of the Senator who lost his home, but he didn't come near the Superdome. I don't guess that he dared to venture anywhere near the Convention Center. He expressed for the cameras his sympathy, his pity, but he never set foot in the Crescent City. He didn't take a step toward me and all of us in the Ninth Ward. He don't, he don't, he don't know. He don't know. Nobody has to tell me so. He don't, he don't, he don't know. Everybody wants someone they can trust. Everybody wants someone who knows what's just. Everybody wants someone who sees what's true, and when he sees what's true, he knows what to do. Everybody wants someone who's a man of action, who won't hid behind spin or political faction, who won't hide behind force, who won't hide behind might, who'll do all in his power to do what is right.
The title song of the album is the story of Hurricane Katrina and the abandonment of the people of New Orleans in its aftermath. I wrote the words in stream of consciousness fashion when the details of what happened, and didn't happen, what was not done, were fresh and stark. I did not know if those words would ever be lyrics that I could rein in to a coherent song, but I wanted to get the words down while they could capture the rawness in a way that now, with the passage of time, they never could. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
troubled by you
I was born with nothing in a cabin in the woods. When I look at my reflection, I don't know if it was bad for me or good. I'm troubled by you, troubled by you. I can see my direction. It's coming down from above. And it tells me what I'm wanting: to surrender and be deeply in love. But I feel backed in a corner; this is not what I thought it would be. And this internal storm or hurricane is what's happening to me. I'm troubled by you, troubled by you. I'm troubled by you, troubled by you. I don't know about nothing, but this much is true. I'm troubled by you. Yeah, I'm troubled by you. Yeah, I'm troubled by you. I'm troubled by you. Yeah, I'm troubled by you. Now I seek inspiration. I never know when it will come. And in my desperation, I wonder if it's flowed through me and it's already gone. I don't know about nothing, but this much I do. I'm troubled by you. Yeah, I'm troubled by you. Yeah I'm troubled by you. I'm troubled by you. Yeah, I'm troubled. Back in the city, with the cool and the pretty, wondering what I'm gonna do. We walk in tall cotton but the souls are all rotten, and I don't know how I'm gonna get through. I'm troubled by you.
developed this song on the electric guitar and in the key of B minor, both unusual for me. I was reading about Abraham Lincoln at the time and, when asked, at first I thought the song was about him - not his life, but some of the many eternal things that can be found in the story of his life. And I guess you could say it was, in the sense that it is about someone who was born in poverty and grows up to live among the rich and famous, in this case in the New York City of our times. This man is haunted by a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, of gnawing doubts about the shallowness he senses in his lover, and in himself. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
THIS IS MY COUNTRY
This is my country. She's been down on the scene. She can be generous. She can be mean. She can be tender. She can be cruel. She can be wise.. She can be a fool. This is my country. This is my song. Sometimes she's right. Sometimes she's wrong. I went down to the corner and I heard the door slam. I've been gone so long, they don't forgot who I am. This is my country. This is where we live. We've got so much still in us, so much to give. This is my country. Let this be her creed - let's don't take everything we want; let's just take what we need. This is my country. She's been good to us all. But she's standing on the ledge like she's gonna take a fall. This is my country. She's been rolling in clover. Now they wanna grill her on one side, roll her over. There's some that don't like her, you can hear them grouse. There's even some that hate her, living in her house. We don't need derision. We don't need arrogance. We don't need division. We just need competence. This is my country. She's been down on the scene. She can be generous. She can be mean. She can be tender. She can be cruel. She can be wise. She can be a fool. This is my country. This is my song. Sometimes she's right. Sometimes she's wrong. This is my country. When we make a mistake, we've got to own right up to it before it's too late.
This song reflects the combination of patriotism and criticism that together make up my view of my homeland, and my hunger for a return to what I see as our rightful place in the world, for recognition by the critics among us of the special place our nation holds in history and on the road to freedom, and for recognition by our defenders of the mistakes we have made of late. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
loves a truck
I'm a lucky devil. Let me count the ways. 'Cos my angel likes riding nearly every day. She's a red hot mama and we always have fun when we go for a ride into the setting sun. Bless her heart. Bless my luck. I'm married to a woman that loves a truck. My nephew came to see me for some sage advice. He said, "What should I look for when I choose a wife?" I said, "Remember this, just remember son - you two will be together when the day is done. Don't take a chance, don't trust to luck. Marry you a woman that loves a truck." Red ones, white ones, hello too. Midnight black and metallic blue. Mid-size, full-size, king cab, crew. Dodge and Ford and Chevy, too. As for me, it's simple from where I stand. She's a good times woman, I'm a hard-drivin' man. We travel well together down the road of life. I bless the day that she became my wife. Bless her heart. Bless my luck. I'm married to a woman that loves a truck.
This song is a good natured tribute to love, marriage...and pickup trucks. This one came to me more or less all at once at the end of a business trip as I was walking through the terminal at the Atlanta Airport. I sat down and scribbled out five verses (or, as it turned out, potential verses) in the margins of an airline magazine. The inspiration was an event that had occurred several years earlier when I bought a used pickup truck to handle chores around our family's home near Sugarloaf Mountain, Maryland. My wife Melanie wasn't wild about the idea of us buying a truck at first. Then about three weeks after buying it we went to a party, where a friend casually said to me, "Man, your wife sure does like that new truck of hers! I see her driving it around here every day!" After 35 years of marriage, "we still travel well together down the road of life," in the words of the song. And our marriage and our two beautiful children are the blessings of my life. The truck? We kept it for 14 years until trading it in to the "cash for clunkers" program last year. Melanie drives a Prius now. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
THE WIND SO STILL
The wind, so still, echoes through the trees. Time is marching from the ground. The shadows rise. You know the dead's alive. The lost is found, lady. The pigs are growling. The hound dogs moan. The bog bites through your skin. And the stars' last light is as black as the night and your sin, lady. Beware, beware, they'll be here soon. There's not a thing you can do. And when they take what they need, will they take you, lady?
This song was born with an air of mystery about it. I'm not sure where the images came from exactly. It's about the terror that white plantation owners in the pre-Civil War South felt after Nat Turner's slave rebellion in the early 1830s. I wrote it when I was a young man, discovering American history in college, after reading some diaries from those times. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
am i falling in love with you again?
Lately I'm remembering days from long ago, and a dream-like, stream-like sequence of events that did unfold. I can see your face before me, angelic and bronze, while your hangdog husband hounded us through the streets of Oregon. I guess it's true. Well, I guess it's true. What was it you saw in me? A kid with dreams and brains. You told me I was Demian, but you didn't quite explain. You asked me for a date. You said your husband didn't mind. "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" With that arrangement he was fine. It could be true. Yeah, it could be true. Am I falling in love with you again, again? Am I falling in love with you again? When I was in love with you, I couldn't open up my door. Yeah, when I was in love with you, I couldn't open up my door. She said, "Please don't ask me to stay anymore." And she walked right out the door. What did I know about it? Why not, what could be the harm? And we kissed under the stars that night and she melted in my arms. For a few brief weeks I reveled in my life. I didn't know at home it was all strife. I didn't know her husband said, "God damn it, you're my wife. Don't see him no more. Don't see him no more." Am I falling in love with you again, again? Am I falling in love with you again? The fire burns into embers, the embers into ash. The ashes turn to dust and then they're buried in the past. Where were you coming from? Somewhere behind the dawn. Where were you going that you had to lead me on? I turned my head to ponder what went wrong. I turned my head to watch you walking on. I turned my head and looked away and when I looked back, you were gone. It could be true. It could be true. It could be true. In love with you.
This is another song that goes back many years, all the way back to my early college years (they were extended). Unlike most of the others on the CD, this song takes part of its story line from certain events in my own life in those times. I wrote the tune and some of the words, including the chorus, back then, but never finished it. I always thought there would come a time when I would, because I liked the different parts of the tune - verse, bridge and chorus - a lot. When the band was rehearsing for our first recording session at the Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, where we were traveling specifically to record my new song "Levon," I knew we would have enough studio time to record three songs. I wanted to pick them to fit the sound and ambience in the Studio. I settled on "Way Down In Dixie Land" as our second song, but I didn't know what we would do for a third. I thought "Falling In Love" would lend itself really well, so I started working on the vocals and the lyrics and committed the band to record it. That meant I had to finish the song! I had a few quiet hours on a plane on a business trip to Nebraska, got inspired, and succeeded in writing a full set of lyrics, building on the lines and phrases that I remembered from the past. I felt they were good, even very good. Unfortunately, though, I had written them on the back of a draft contract I was taking to my meetings there, and then I had to put the song out of my mind until the meetings were over and I was back at the airport waiting for the plane back to Washington. I went to pull those lyrics out of my bag to work on them some more, and realized with a sinking feeling that I had left behind, in my hotel room, the draft contract that I no longer needed, the meetings being over, to lighten the load of documents in my bag. I first tried to remember what I had written, tried to recreate the lyrics. I got some of them, but not all. So I went for a long shot and called the hotel. Ironically, the hotel staff had made a serious mistake with my room reservation during a previous stay (I had been moved out of my room), and my bitter complaints resulted in me receiving a personal apology from the hotel manager, along with his direct dial number and an invitation to call if I ever needed anything. So I called him and told him what had happened, and asked if he could check to see if the room I had stayed in had already been cleaned. He did. It had been. But he volunteered to ask the staff to check through the bags of trash from the rooms along that corridor to see if they could find the contract document with the writing on the back. He called me back and said they had found it! His assistant manager said they would put the document in a large envelope and mail it back to me at my office in Washington. All right! But then the envelope never shoed up! Never. Lost in the mail somewhere. The date of the recoding session was upon us. So on the eve of the trip to Woodstock, I took the words I had from the old days, as much as I could remember of the new words I had created, and wrote new lyrics to fill out the rest. What an ordeal! But we got it. I think this song was one of our best recordings, and I think it contains some of the best lines on the CD: "The fire burns into embers, the embers into ash. The ashes turn to dust and then they're buried in the past." - Jim Choukas-Bradley
a song for jeff
The sun went down. I looked across the room. What happened, happened. But it happened way too soon. I watched for you to reappear and whisper something in my ear. And soon, it will have been a year, my love. Do you believe in miracles? I do. A sudden breeze, a flash of wings, it's you. A guitar playing plaintively strums the chords of memory. Your perfect voice in harmony, my love. And so I think of yesterday and you. I tell myself that what I can't conceive is really real, is really true. And in my heart, I do believe that someday I will be with you. That someday it will all be true. The sun goes down. I walk across the room. What happened, happened, and it happened way too soon. Tomorrow I may see the sign and know the timelessness of time and generations out of mind, my love.
I wrote this song on the first anniversary of the death of my close friend Jeff Daniels. Jeff was a wonderful man of many passions and talents, among them being an extraordinary guitar player and singer, especially of harmonies. Jeff died of cancer, way way before his rightful time. The song is written in the voice of Jeff's deep, loving wife Terrie, and captures in words some of the miracles that she experienced and passed on to her close friends in the days and weeks following Jeff's passing, miracles which showed her that his spirit was often nearby, seeking to comfort and reassure her as she continued on in life. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
still (the soldier's song)
There's a picture on the mantle when the soldier was a boy, in the days before Bin Laden, before innocence was destroyed, of happy days in high school playing football with his friends. His bride-to-be cheered for him. His mom and dad were in the stands. Justin volunteered for duty. He was a patriotic son. The President had called on him to fight until we won. And he believed in the mission. He believed he served a cause of God and faith and country and a world of peace and laws. Still...the flag is flying. Still...his mama is crying. Still...his body is lying still. Justin was a willing soldier. He was a boy become a man. He trained at Benning, Georgia, and shipped to Afghanistan. And from there he went to Kuwait and on to Basra and into Baghdad, where he fought a brutal enemy in an ancient world gone bad. Well, he never saw it coming. The shells ripped through his back in a graveyard called Fallujah, where the daylight turned to black. When they brought him home to Main Street, the town held a grand parade to honor his great courage, the supreme sacrifice he had made. Still...the flag is flying. Still...his mama is crying. Still...his body is lying still. Well, they lined the streets in tribute while his coffin made its way. Sobs were heard. Somebody sang "God Bless the USA." But no one asked the question, though it turned in every mind - Did Justin truly die for something worth leaving his loved ones behind? Still...the flag is flying. Still...his mama is crying. Still...his body is lying still.
way down in dixieland
I don't care about the hard times. I don't care about the frost. All I care is that you get here without your little self getting lost. So pack up your big coat, get yourself a ticket for the train, and sit down in a window seat so you'll know when you see me again. Way down in Dixie land, you know where I'm gonna be - sitting in my easy chair till you come rolling down the tracks to me, rolling down the tracks to me. It's been a long old winter, a long winter on the road. And like you said, I sure got tired the very first time that it snowed. I didn't have now sleeping bag to sleep in when the cold wind blows. All I had was my memories, and I sure got plenty of those. Way down in Dixie land, you know where I'm gonna be - sitting in my easy chair till you come rolling down the tracks to me, rolling down the tracks to me. Just when I thought it was really the end, I see your face and I'm back on top again. Jesse James was a bandit, an outlaw - I know it's true. But he would have been an honest man if he'd had him a woman like you. I know how it is down in Texas. Nobody looks you in the face. But that's all right, 'cos when you get here we're gonna be the only two in the place. Way down in Dixie land, you know where I'm gonna be - sitting in my easy chair till you come rolling down the tracks to me, rolling down the tracks to me.
I'm not from the South. I grew up in New England and have a Yankee's views on many things. But I have spent a lot of time in the South, and I love the South. Of course I know of the stain of slavery, and the perversions of the brain and the soul that led many white Southerners to believe, or at least convince themselves they believed, that slavery was a moral good that should be extended throughout the Western Hemisphere, not contained and gradually eliminated. I know it was warped, was evil. And I know slavery's stain not only colors our past, but that its legacy, physical and mental, lives on in us as a country in many, many ways. But I fell in love with the South - Southern geography, and Southern culture, and Southern people (black and white and black and white together) and especially Southern music, a long, long time ago, with a young man's romantic yearning. Rural, not urban, and tinged with the rural even when it was urban. Warm. Hot. Mountain living in anonymity and independence. Simplicity in material things. Making do. Without complaint. Jefferson and Jackson. Populism. The natural world and integral part of everyday life. And music an integral part of being alive. So it's no surprise that in this tune, one of my earliest songs, a simple song about romance and yearning and wandering and independence, I set the destination for reunion in the South. - Jim Choukas-Bradley
THE CIVIL WAR WAS OVER
The Civil War was over, boys, the smoke lay on the ground. General Lee stood in the door and said, "Lay your rifles down." I started on my long way home, walking through the mountains on the rhododendron road. The Civil War was over, boys. The dead lay in the earth. Someday, someone looking back may know what it was worth. From Georgia, Texas, Old Virginia, too; they said we fought for slavery, but that was never true. We fought to protect our homeland. There was really nothing else that we could do. The South will rise again so sing it loud. The South will rise again so stand up proud. As for me, I am unbroken and unbowed. The South will rise again so sing it loud. The Civil War was over and the North had finally won. But the blood that turned the streams to red was all American. If we just keep walking we'll get home. Someone there still waits for me alone. When I look into the future, this is what I see: The South will fight the Nation's wars against every enemy; the South will elect the President and take your industry; we'll write the greatest fiction, filled with song and poetry; and we'll create new kinds of music that will set the people free. The South will rise again so sing it loud. The South will rise again so stand up proud. As for me I stand unbroken and unbowed. The South will rise again so sing it loud. La la la la. La la la la. La la la la. La la la la. The Civil War was over, boys, the smoke lay on the ground.
I have spent a good part of my working life in the South, with people who live and were brought up in the states of the old Confederacy. I love the South and have made many good friends there. But I am a Northerner, and I am both glad the North won the Civil War and certain it is a good thing for all of us that the North did. I feel compelled to write a few words about this last song on the album, which is written from the point of view of a Confederate soldier at the end of the Civil War, because the song is one of my favorites, because I sand it in the studio with utter conviction (though until it happened I did not know if I could), and because the line in the song "walking through the mountains on the rhododendron road" was the inspiration for our groups name.
I was inspired to write the song after walking with several of the people who worked for and with Levon Helm, the great singer and drummer who lived in Woodstock, NY, about why he did not sing "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" during his concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in July 2007. My wife Melanie and I had flown down to Nashville from Maryland for the concert, and it was one of the high points of my life to be in the audience that night. The crowd in that beautiful old hall was most appreciative, and well versed. They knew Levon, and they knew The Band, and they knew the music he had been playing in the years since The Band broke up son long ago, too. Through recording sessions at the Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, I had gotten to know some of the people who work with Levon. And by happenstance Melanie and I were staying in the same hotel near the Ryman as Levon and his entourage. The morning after the concert we ran into some of them outside the hotel and got to talking, and in the course of the conversation we asked if they knew why Levon had not sung the song, despite the fact the audience had been calling for it all night.
They mentioned several reasons, and one of them was, they said, that Levon, a Southerner from Arkansas, does not particularly like the sentiment expressed in the song - that the South was beaten down and those who fought on that side were not only physically devastated but also emotionally defeated by the War and the Yankees. From what they said, while the song may have been written for Levon, while Levon's stories may have inspired it, and while Levon's singing may have made the song great, it remained Robbie Robertson's song, not Levon's.
Hearing that was a revelation to me. I thought about it a lot afterward. I realized that indeed one of the things I always most loved about the song is its poignant image of the noble but defeated Southerner, Virgil Cain, his life torn apart inside as well as outside by the fact that the North not only beat the South but also took away the essence of Southern identity, culminating in Levon's bitter lament in the final verse. I realized the song had always satisfied something in me, a Northern boy from Hartford, Connecticut, that it struck a chord with my internalized mythology of the War and the South. I could be sympathetic because complete defeat was acknowledged. I wanted it to be true. But when confronted with this new idea, I could see right away that a Southern man, like Levon, might not feel that way about it, and might not be happy still playing along with Northern sentimentality about it forty years after recording the song.
I let this revelation from Levon's friends seep in and percolate through me for a while. It so happened that I had been reading about the Civil War at that time, and I had a lot of images in my head, especially from the final days of the confrontations between the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia. One evening as I sat at the piano, out came the beginning of a melody and a mood about the ending of the Civil War and the people who were there. Soon came the first line of the new song - "The Civil War was over, boys, the smoke lay on the ground." Like mist, but not sweet and ephemeral mist, but rather the smoke of the bloody, killing, maiming battles, one after another, a heavy shroud that would not soon lift or dissipate, a lingering reminder of the horror of what had occurred, but that would, with time, depart. And just like that I knew that this song could try to articulate the feeling of the Confederate soldier that while the South had lost the War, the people who fought it did not lose themselves.
This one came slowly, in pieces, over the course of a few weeks. I only finished it on the eve of our rehearsal before going back up to Woodstock to record. I felt this song had to be recorded there, in the Levon Helm Studios, so we had to have it finished. Our drummer, Mike Kuhl, upon hearing it for the first time in rehearsal, was immediately was inspired to take the song home with a military drum roll from bygone days, as though the War was walking away down a dusty road. Not only was it a brilliant way of ending the song, but we all agreed it was a fitting way to end our first album. - Jim Choukas-Bradley