Railroads on the Mind and on Down the Line

Surely, no innovation in modern human history has gotten so deeply into our psyche — into our hearts and into our very minds — as the railroad.Train imagery fills our art and music, symbolizing so many beginnings … and, well, endings. Here’s a train tune from our folk-infused youth.About the SongAs reported here earlier, singer/songwriter Eric Andersen introduced his “Dusty Boxcar Wall” in 1965 on his debut album for Vanguard Records, Today is the Highway.A few years earlier, Andersen dropped out of college in Geneva, NY, and hitchhiked west to San Francisco to try his luck singing solo in North Beach coffeehouses and to seek out his heroes, the poets of the Beat Generation.In liner notes for that first album, Stacey Williams said “Dusty Boxcar Wall” was written “on the Bay Bridge between Berkeley and San Francisco,” adding, “Eric had been performing at the Cabale coffeehouse in Berkeley with a city group that did country music, The Snopes County Camp Followers.”Wanting to do a solo with the Snopes group, according to Williams, Andersen wrote “this archetypal song of death, love and separation.” For more about this seminal Eric Andersen song, see our earlier Flood Watch article by clicking here.More Music, PleaseIf this week’s podcast has you in the mood for more tracks about trains, boy, do we have ya covered! Visit the free Radio Floodango music streaming service, and under “The Special Blends,” click on “The Train Set.” The link below tells you all about that particular project:And if you want even more folk in your Flood Friday, turn on our free Folk Channel.Or just click here to to take the express route to start that randomized rotation of more than a hundred folky Flood tracks recorded over the decades at jam sessions, rehearsals and gigs.Finally, remember, we’ve now got cool ways to mobilize the ol’ Floodango. Click here to find out how to put The Flood’s radio activity on your computer desktop and on an iPhone. That way, your Flood fix will always be just a click away. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com