On the Balin' album, this song fits in so seamlessly it's easy to overlook. It starts out with a few notes on the banjo, which meets up with a gentle guitar and quiet dobro. The lyrics are simple, just someone lamenting about what there "ought" to be in the world. The images used in the song (a mountain road, a switchback windin') take you visually to a lonely place. A fiddle sneaks up in the background with a few notes that make you forlorn instantly. The last line before the song goes into the dobro interlude ("and you ought to be here with me, that's the way it was supposed to be") is all you really need to know about the motives behind the song. You get the emotion behind the song without caring that there's no story or chorus to it. You can connect the times in your life where you just want something that you don't have and don't know how to get.
The dobro bit in the middle and the fiddle at the end are among the most sublime pieces of music I've ever heard. In a bad mood they connect with that bad mood, in a good mood they elevate that good mood with the beauty behind them. The fact that the song finishes with the promise that "it will be faded out by then" and the band's friendly banter back and forth adds to the perfection of the song somehow in my mind. The song conveys an emotion that can take you anywhere, but at the end that emotion comes back to the people that it was grounded in and who produced this art.
Lyrics
Ought to be a train somewhere,
Ought to be a railroad line,
Ought to be a rusted train,
Ought to be a lonely sign,
Ought to whistle blowin',
Ought to be one thin dime,
Ought to be a train somewhere to take me down the line.
Ought to be a switchback windin',
Ought to be a mountain road,
Ought to be a run-a-way lane when there's nowhere else to go.
Ought to be a low gear sign,
Ought to be a dangerous prairie (?),
Ought to be a switchback windin' to make things go my way,
And you ought to be here with me,
That's the way it was supposed to be.
Ought to be a train somewhere,
Ought to be switchback windin',
Take me up into the clouds into all that silver lining,
Ought to be a low gear sign,
Ought to be a mountain road,
Ought to be a run-a-way land when there's nowhere else to go,
Ought to be a run-a-way land when there's nowhere else to go.
Chords are G, F, and C with a capo on the second fret (as far as I can tell....there's a good chance I'm wrong).
couple fixes
ReplyDeletefourth line is "ought to be a lonely siding"
twelfth line is "ought to be a dangerous grade"
line eighteen is "take me up into the clouds, they all have silver linings"
and clearly the last two lines are "runaway lane" not land.