Sunday Mixtape #35: To the Sound of Passing Trains

This is the track list for To the Sound of Passing Trains, a mixtape made for Jay Thompson on January 31, 2023. It is the eighth mixtape in the 42/40 Explorer Series Box Set. It is a mixtape on a single CD with a silence track in the middle to mark the split from Side A to Side B on a 60-minute cassette.

Side A:

1. Tanya Tucker, Mustang Ridge — from the album While I’m Livin’ (2019)

2. Paul Burch, Back to the Honky Tonks — from the album Meridian Rising (2016)

3. Jackson C. Frank, Yellow Walls — from the album Jackson C. Frank (1965)

4. Robert Finley, Medicine Woman — from the album Goin’ Platinum (2017)

5. C.W. Stoneking, We Gon’ Boogaloo — from the album Gon’ Boogaloo (2014)

6. David Rawlings, Put ‘em Up Solid — from the album Poor David’s Almanack (2017)

7. Steve Earle, If I Could See Your Face Again — from the album Ghosts of West Virginia (2020)

8. Freakwater, Take Me With You — from the albm Scheherazade (2016)

9. Shannon McNally, Prayer In Open D — from the album Black Irish (2017)

Intermission…set down the guitar a minute…scrape the embers up into a little heap

Side B:

1. Joan Baez, Whistle Down the Wind — from the album Whistle Down the Wind (2018)

2. Gill Landry, Denver Girls — from the album Love Rides a Dark Horse (2017)

3. Bob Weir, Blue Mountain — from the album Blue Mountain (2016)

4. Old Crow Medicine Show, Ain’t It Enough — from the album Carry Me Back (2012)

5. Mount Moriah, Calvander — from the album How to Dance (2016)

6. Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leaving Eden — from the album Leaving Eden (2012)

7. Robbie Fulks, Fare Thee Well, Carolina Gals — from the album Upland Stories (2016)

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Seventeen Campfires (an evening walk through the campground)

(1)

They haven’t seen one another in at least a decade and they’ve scarcely kept in touch — maybe a postcard once from Arkansas, a text about an old friend who died…they’ve got a lot of stories to catch up on.

(2)

When they used to camp together it was on the range, running cattle across the empty land. For certain, those were the days. Thooose were the days.

(3)

Trouble in this campsite, but they’re not gonna talk about it. Adult siblings without families of their own. Dad’s gone. Thought it would be nice to bring Mom out one more time in case she goes soon too. Lots of tension, not a lot said.

(4)

They brought the hard liquor and drank it. Like this was some kinda dive bar.

(5)

Sometimes all it takes is one joyful personality and the whole camping trip works like a charm. A buoyant, dumb-headed physicality comes out of everyone and naturally they’re dancing two-step around the campfire.

(6)

But it’s true that staring into a fire sometimes brings out the wisdom and philosophy that folks work so hard to win in the course of their difficult lives. And the warmth of that passing on of knowledge and advice overrides its limitations.

(7)

Only one person here, one small tent, clothes hanging around it. She doesn’t seem sad, exactly, but meditative, quiet. Almost meeting eyes of folks passing by her site — but not quite.

(8)

Clearly we’re on the quiet loop. Voices threading in and out without any hurry. They’re just talking a little longer, finishing up thoughts they’ve held in mind while hiking these past few days.

(9)

A woman sits quietly strumming an acoustic guitar while two friends sit slumped beside the fire. One of them reaches out a stick and shifts the logs a little.

(10)

(already in the tent, campfire out)

(11)

It’s a good thing this family so clearly loves one another. Grandma is deep into the melancholy of her life and listing off the stories of camping expeditions from the past. Or maybe she’s reading poems by Kenneth Rexroth? Difficult to tell. Anyway, everyone here wants to hear.

(12)

Even as a man I mostly stay away from the sites where it’s two men sitting, talking.

(13)

Some folks have parents who don’t care too much about camping, or are too busy with their lives in the city. So once in a while, Uncle Bob or Uncle Jake brings the kids out for some time outdoors. They ask about it all the time (when it’s going to happen) and they’ll remember it forever (and take their own kids camping).

(14)

Honestly, I bet these guys have been playing together in a band, or at least one time they played together in a band. These aren’t the kinds of harmonies you hit by accident. And it’s the only campsite where everyone present has an instrument of some kind. Who brings a mandolin to the campground?

(15)

They’re drinking responsibly, but far enough in that the emotions are starting to come out pretty hard. There’s a lot they’ve been holding onto the last few months in that weird arrangement of individual apartments and collaborative housing situations. Not many people you can trust to talk to when you’re feeling this and that so intensely through the days.

(16)

Three middle-aged women, cousins probably, they don’t quite seem like sisters, sit talking without any real direction to their conversation. The subject is consistent, though, a single thread — what’s gone wrong, and what hasn’t.

(17)

Every night in the campground ends with solitary reminiscence. In the end we’re all alone, even camping with the folks we love.