Singer-songwriters and longtime friends Billy Bragg and Joe Henry hopped a train in Chicago last March and spent the next several days riding the rails on a 2,728-mile journey to Los Angeles.
They not only took in scenery across a great swath of the Midwest and Southwest, but they also recorded 13 songs referencing trains and the mystical quality railroad travel has held for generations of musicians. The result is "Shine a Light: Field Recordings from the Great American Railroad," an album due Sept. 23 that indeed was recorded aboard the train and at various stops along the way.
The album "grew directly out of friendship _ Bill and I having been 'brothers' some 25 years now _ and a desire to move these songs from a perception of shelved nostalgia back into the realm of common, useful and shared vocabulary," Henry said.
Among their choices: Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain" (which the Canadian songwriter wrote while living in Los Angeles in the early 1960s), Jean Ritchie's "The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore," John Hartford's "Gentle On My Mind," Hank Williams' "Lonesome Whistle" and traditionals including "The Midnight Special," "In the Pines" "The Rock Island Line" and "John Henry."
At various railway station stops, the duo took the opportunity to record different songs live, with just acoustic guitar accompaniment, often capturing the sonic ambience of the rooms they set up in. "With this project, we wanted to explore the transformative power that the coming of the railroad had on the lives of ordinary people by taking these songs back to the places that inspired their creation," Bragg says. "Traveling on the train and recording the songs as we went allowed us to both visit places that were important 125 years ago when the lines were laid, but to also explore the viability of the railroad as a means of transport in the 21st century."
For example, they stopped at an Amtrak Station in Alpine, Texas, to record Goebel Reeves' song "Hobo's Lullaby," one of the most disarmingly endearing train songs ever written and one inextricably linked with American folk music icon Woody Guthrie.
Bragg notes the special L.A. connection of that song, which "entered Woody's repertoire when he was broadcasting from Los Angeles on KFVD with 'Lefty Lou' (Crissman) in the late-'30s and became one of his signature tunes."
