Take Me Home

Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia wrote the Grateful Dead song ‘So Many Roads’, which was first performed on February 22, 1992 and it was played live about 50 times till Jerry died three years later.  In an interview, Garcia said about this song, “It’s Hunter writing me from my point of view, you know what I mean?  We’ve been working together for so long that he knows what I know.  The song is full of references to things that have to do with me, so Hunter is the only guy that could do that.  He can write my point of view better than I can think it, you know what I mean?  So that’s the kind of relationship we have.  And he frequently writes tunes from my point of view that are autobiographical. There actually biographical, I guess.  He’s the one writing them, but even so they express my point of view – and more than that they express the emotional content of my soul in a certain way that only a long-term and intimate relationship with a guy as brilliant as Hunter coughs up … I can sing that song, feel totally comfortable with it.  Hunter commented on this song saying, “One afternoon, Jerry was playing some unstructured changes on the piano.  Figuring they might be forgotten otherwise, I clicked on my tape recorder.  Ten years later I found the tape and listened to it, liked it, and set these words to it.  Listening to the pitifully recorded and time-degraded tape, Jerry protested that, although he liked the words, his changes were not very good and unfinished besides.  This didn’t seem to be the base and I requested that he at least give it a run through.  The result was one of the better received new GD songs and one that almost got away.”

This was one of Hunter and Garcia’s final songwriting collaborations, and its lyrics quote a couple of Garcia’s favorite songs, the 1929 Memphis Jug Band classic ‘K.C. Moan’ and Jelly Roll Morton’s ‘Winin’ Boy Blues’ that was first recorded by Alan Lomax in 1939.  There may possibly be a reference to the Beatles song ‘Blackbird’ in this and also the Fats Domino song ‘Blueberry Hill’ although the lyrics say “Bluebird Hill.”  In the Merle Travis song ‘Sixteen Tons’ which was made famous by Tennessee Ernie Ford, it includes a line that says, “Born on a day when the sun didn’t shine” and that may be referenced in this song also.  On their 1966 debut album Big Brother & the Holding Company recorded a song titled ‘Easy Rider’ where the chorus features the line, “Easy rider don’t you deny my name” and similar lyrics appear in this song along with ‘Winin’ Boy Blues’.  Another Fats Domino song may be referenced with the lyrics in the end of the first verse, “ain’t that a shame?”  Hunter must have been thinking about the Chuck Berry song where he sings “No particular place to go, So we parked way out on the Kokomo” when he wrote this tune and that was also a popular Beach Boys song.

Thought I heard a blackbird singing
Up on Bluebird Hill
Call me a whinin’ boy if you will
Born where the sun don’t shine
And I don’t deny my name
Got no place to go, ain’t that a shame?

Thought I heard that KC whistle
Moaning sweet and low
Thought I heard that KC when she blow
Down where the sun don’t shine
Underneath the Kokomo
Whinin’ boy got no place to go

So many roads I tell you
So many roads I know
So many roads, so many roads
Mountain high, river wide
So many roads to ride
So many roads, so many roads

Thought I heard a jug band playin’
“If you don’t… who else will?”
From over on the far side of the hill
All I know the sun don’t shine
And the rain refused to fall
And you don’t seem to hear me when I call

Wind inside and the wind outside
Tangled in the window blind
Tell me why you treat me so unkind
Down where the sun don’t shine
Lonely and I call your name
No place left to go, ain’t that a shame?

So many roads I tell you
New York to San Francisco
So many roads I know
All I want is one to take me home
From the high road to the low
So many roads I know
So many roads so many roads

From the land of the midnight sun
Where the ice blue roses grow
Along those roads of gold and silver snow
Howlin’ wide or moaning low
So many roads I know
So many roads to ease my soul

So many roads to ease my soul
So many roads to ease my soul
So many roads to ease my soul
So many roads to ease my soul

Written for Thursday Inspiration #225 Nantucket Sleighride where the prompt is home.