Okay, well, here’s the new song for this week. Got it done at the very last minute, last night. It’s not a totally new song cause I been thinking about it for a while and cause it’s inspired by the Woody Guthrie song, This Train Is Bound For Glory.

I’ve been trying to write this one, or at least thinking about what I’d do for it for some time. It’s a commission (of sorts) by a friend who owns and operates the La Adelita food truck in Chicago. He thought it’d be great to do a song about all the crazy rules and regulations and laws heaped up on the shoulders of all the new trucks popping up around the city.

I wasn’t quite sure about writing a song like that. Mainly cause I haven’t done a song like that in a long time. If it was 3 or 4 years ago I probably coulda written it the day I got asked. And probably woulda done it in the talkin’ blues style like I was asked. But I’m just not as practiced at that anymore. (The Talkin’ Headline Blues are a whole other thing since I don’t really actually write any of those. I just organize them.)

Anyway. I didn’t have a song for this week and I had come up with the idea of a food truck song based around This Train Is Bound For Glory on Monday or Tuesday this week. So I sat down and tried to hammer it out.

I think it turned out okay. It’s definitely not done yet. This is a total draft. I didn’t even use microphones, just sang and played straight into my computer mic (so, sorry for the low quality).

Also, after I recorded it I changed the “This truck is bound for glory” verse. It now goes like this (I was too tired to try and re-record it, plus I think this recording gets across the right tempo and feel that I want for the song):

This truck is bound for Glory, this truck
This truck is bound for Glory, this truck
This truck is bound for Glory
Only carries what’s done wholey (holy)
This truck is bound for Glory, this truck

This works better in the rhythm of the song, I think. Do you understand this verse? The parenthetical is there to lead you on, it’s not meant to be sung.

Okay, well, I think that’s it. There also has been talk of a video that may eventually be associated with this song. I’ve got an idea about that, but I’m not willing to share it. You’ll have to wait and see.

Keep on truckin’….

Well, I haven’t written a straight-up folk song for a few weeks, so this one kinda popped out easy last night. Had this idea floatin around up in my head, over the weekend, to do a tune about the vagrancy law in Chicago that says if you’ve got less than one dollar in your pocket they can charge you and lock you up and throw out the key.

I thought I’d do a song about that, wondering if a credit card counts for cash these days. Or, maybe, if your heap of past-due credit counts against you, and we’re all vagrants walking around.

Anyway, I don’t really write songs like that anymore. Or, haven’t in a long time. Topical songs just don’t seem so relevant anymore. At least not for what I got goin on.

So the song I did write is different than what I set out to do. I did still use the song “Jack of Diamonds” as my base, though. It’s an old traditional tune. I heard Woody Guthrie do it on a record in a way where he sings, “Chicago, Chicago, I know’d you of old, you robbed my poor pockets of silver and gold,” instead of the traditional verse, “Jack a Diamonds, Jack a Diamonds, I’ve known you of old….” So that’s where that comes from.

The rest is completely made up. Or, maybe, pieced together from a few other old songs. Try and guess which ones.