Romanticization and Richmond

I have been thinking of the following for more than a week now:

I love all the different instruments that bluegrass music offers. The pennywhistle is the Irishman's laughter, but it is also the mother's indignation, and the wind. The Dobro is the romantic or tear-jerking outcry, the father's anger, the odyssey. The harmonica is the sweet peals of victory, Gabriel's trumpet. The upright bass is the beast's breath, the mountain.

In a few hours I leave for Atlanta. I wish I could have seen it in the fifties.

Musically-Inspired Geographic Location of The Day
Today, I keep focusing on the land where I shall rest under the banana tree: Tennessee. Its really interesting what keeps happening to me with certain musicians. Old Crow Medicine show I liked, were it not for the sharp pangs of the harmonica and the rattle of the man's voice (surely he must contort it in someway to get that authentic sound). I have come to enjoy those sharp retorts, and even am considering buying their album Tennessee Pusher. I have been thinking of the hills of Tennessee, but the cover of this album leads me further west still. It may be merely Tennessee, but for somebody who can barely afford forty dollars in gas to a magical plateau town that people say is not unlike San Francisco, western Tennessee is very very far. Plus, its fun to play the Dobro. I imagine the flat land and jaloppys. But, back to the Location. The song is a relaxed down-home tune that floats through a town, at the intersection of two interstates, a rail-line, and a river. Richmond, Virgina. It sings about the James River, and the sea life images evoked from the rocks and docks. The freedom and escapement, and the violin that comes in after "I think I'll float on down to Richmond town" that lets you feel the boat man's happy abandon. The "lets get out of this dusty old town" emotion showed so perfectly in the shape of the even epic-like melody is wonderful and filled with sunlight. When we leave this life, a memory is all we become to the earth anyway. Floating is definitely the way to live.

James River blues

That train came on through

And works gettin' slow

So where's a boat man to go?

I think I'll float on down

To Richmond town

They don't need us anymore

Haulin' freight from shore to shore
That old iron boat hauls more
Than we ever could before