dream a highway back to you

There's some people I miss and love with a highway heart.   This song in some ways sums my feelings, but it is the refrain that evidences that I keep circling back to face the feelings I always carry.

I think the guy who made this video shortened the song by cutting out some choruses, but that's okay.  I kept them in place in the lyrics posted after the video.   Take a little Gillian Welch with your meandering mountain drive.



I Dream A Highway - Gillian Welch

Oh I dream a highway back to you love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and rest my soul
I dream a highway back to you

John he's kicking out the footlights
The Grand Ole Opry's got a brand new band
Lord, let me die with a hammer in my hand
I dream a highway back to you.

I think I'll move down into Memphis
And thank the hatchet man who forked my tongue
I lie and wait until the wagons come
And dream a highway back to you.

The getaway kicking up cinders
An empty wagon full of rattling bones
Moon in the mirror on a three-hour jones,
I dream a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you, love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vison come arrest my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Which lover are you, Jack of Diamonds?
Now you be Emmylou and I'll be Gram
I send a letter, don't know who I am
I dream a highway back to you.

I'm an indisguisable shade of twilight
Any second now I'm gonna turn myself on
In the blue display of the cool cathode ray
I dream a highway back to you.

I wish you knew me, Jack of Diamonds
Fire-riding, wheeling when I lead em up
Drank whisky with my water, sugar in my tea
My sails in rags with the staggers and the jags
I dream a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you, love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come molest my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Now give me some of what you're having
I'll take you as a viper into my head
A knife into my bed, arsenic when I'm fed
I dream a highway back to you.

Hang overhead from all directions
Radiation from the porcelain light
Blind and blistered by the morning white
I dream a highway back to you.

Sunday morning at the diner
Hollywood trembles on the verge of tears
I watched the waitress for a thousand years
Saw a wheel within a wheel, heard a call within a call
I dreamed a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you, love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come molest my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Step into the light, poor Lazarus
Don't lie alone behind the window shade
Let me see the mark death made
I dream a highway back to you.
I dream a highway back to you.

What will sustain us through the winter?
Where did last year's lessons go?
Walk me out into the rain and snow
I dream a highway back to you.

Oh I dream a highway back to you, love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and bless my soul
I dream a highway back to you
I dream a highway back to you

Oh I dream a highway back to you, love
A winding ribbon with a band of gold
A silver vision come and bless my soul
I dream a highway back to you.

Gillian Welch

The first album I bought by Gillian Welch was Revival. I bought it in the used CD store in Oxford, MS, called Uncle Buck's Records. Since the days I lived in Oxford, MS, Uncle Buck's closed and Hot Dog Records opened for a few years before kicking the bucket, too. I loved the slow rocking rhythm of "Pass You By" and the way Gillian sang, her vocals saturating the air, pouring out like molasses, drawing out words to match the melody.

"Don't turn no head, don't catch no eye Just a wind on the road, gonna pass you by Don't come over here, Don't scream don't cry Just a wind on the road, gonna pass you by"

Sometime after I bought Revival, I saw that Gillian and David were coming to Oxford for a gig in Proud Larry's, a bar and restaurant just off the downtown square. This was before the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? came out with Gillian singing "I'll Fly Away" with Alison Krauss. This was before she was well known, from what I could determine. The audience was full but not crammed, and the tiny stage was just enough for Gillian and David to play. I stood over to stage-right, near a speaker and the checker-paned windows looking out on the alley. The stage was only one step up, and if I had stood in the back I would not have been able to stare at their fingers on the guitars, banjos, and mandolins. I was fascinated and had forgotten my camera. She sang several songs I knew, and many I had not yet heard. Some days later, when I was dating someone for several months, I was given the CD Hell Among the Yearlings. The songs here were slower and more mellow than the ones on Revival. It took me a lot longer to like these songs, but eventually I did. My favorite song, played over and over in my car stereo when I went for a long drive to have time to myself, was "Tear My Stillhouse Down."

"Oh tell all your children That Hell ain't no dream 'Cause Satan he lives In my whiskey machine And in my time of dying I know where I'm bound So when I die tear my stillhouse down."

I just loved the way she sang every line of that song, powerful and regretful, mournful of the march drumming behind her last request of tearing the stillhouse down. "Don't leave no trace of the hiding place where we made that evil stuff" just bounces off your tongue; the poetry of the lyrics struck me. Some time later she and David came back to Oxford for the Double Decker Arts Festival in April. We sat with Organic Blue Sky Raspberry sodas in hand on the balcony of Square Books overlooking the stage and their performance. I don't remember if I had my camera with me this time, but I probably didn't take very many pictures after all. A few years later, on April 24, 2004, I came back to the Festival, making a special trip up from Jackson, MS, to see them perform again. A two year relationship had ended a year earlier and we were meeting to be cordial and try to maintain a friendship. But I disappeared a few times to enjoy the show and to take some pictures from just below the stage, all angled awkwardly. I wanted to stand but nearly all the audience had sat down to enjoy the music. Much later, after moving to Hattiesburg, MS, for graduate school at USM and settling into an empty apartment with scattered boxes everywhere waiting to be unpacked, I had Gillian's album Soul Journey playing "Lowlands" loudly.

"Oh I've been in the lowlands too long, Oh, I know, I know that I should go, And I've been in the lowlands too long"

It was the epitome of being happy to move into my first apartment, a place of my own. Music on constantly, Gillian singing about making a pallet on the floor or Miss Ohio. I read reviews that contradicted with my opinion of the album, criticizing the songs I liked most, and preferring the ones I liked least. I am waiting for Gillian and David to come to Kentucky so I can hear them in their best form, live.

"Ain’t one soul in the whole world knows my name Ain’t one soul in the whole world knows my name But I’ll see it by and by cause it’s written up in the sky Ain’t one soul in the whole world knows my name"