Those Were The Days

Don't read this book until you are at least twenty five. This was also part of my songbook before I took off hitchhiking. I understood Woody better than I did Kerouac. You just have to go. His whole life was just a had to go. Saw Rambling Jack Elliott over in the valley one Friday night a few years ago (took my 12 year old guitar playing son along) and he rambled on about Woody and it became apparent that Woody left at least once or twice to escape the hanging oners, like Elliott. Elliott said he asked Woody how he came to sing the way he did, and Woody told him to go listen to the record. It was all on the record. You wonder if Bobby (Dylan) had read this before he went to NYC? Anyhow, I'm working on the song below (which was one of the song lyrics in the trunk that Woody's wife had) that Billy Bragg and Wilco recreated the music for. It sounds ok on the banjo. I'm also playing This Land Is your Land and In Those Oklahoma Hills   

One of the little snippets I've heard was about the things that hid themselves in Woody's hair. He had a thick woolly mat and when he first arrived in NYC he was filthy from riding trains and hitchhiking and his clothes and hair smelled like two day old wet smoke ash.