This song is about when I first encountered the character of Sam in a dream, and he was walking along a dusty road, showing me his life and struggle as an indigent migrating worker, walking across the red dirt roads of the early American south.
lyrics
Take me back in time
Train of history
Was it myth or memory
Those miles of opportunity
Fiction or faith
Well I don’t know
You have to trust the road you’re on
Mm hmm, you have to leave good enough alone
But beware, they say, the past repeats
Try, try, try, go on try and cheat fate
Oh, oh/Oh
It’s no crime to dare the dream
Can't you hear the ancestors plead
To all who come to set their roots, saying,
“This is my America too”
But try all you like, they say, the past repeats
Go on try, try, try and cheat fate
(Bridge)
Everything a circle, oh
Everything to ash, oh
This I am today
But soon I won’t be the same
No I won’t, oh, no I won’t
Then this I am today but oh no the past can’t have me
Woh oh oh, oh…
Soon I won’t be the same
Well say all you like, the past repeats
Well try, try, try it can't have me
Try, try, try I'm gonna
Try, I'm gonna show the past it can't have me
No one sounds quite like Kela Parker. The Los Angeles-
based, Portland, Oregon-bred singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist pushes the edges of pop forms with her singular mystic prairie rock, “like folk music, but from a country you’ve never heard of before.” (Destination: Universe!)....more
On “Meet Me By the River,” Dawn Landes’s self-described “Nashville record,” buoyant country melodies settle deep into lush instrumentation. Bandcamp New & Notable May 7, 2018