I finally get why people crank up Johnny Cash in the truck

I was dropping off a load of lumber at a job site in Denton last week and this old carpenter in the lot had Folsom Prison Blues maxed out on his radio. He said that song reminds him to keep his head down and just work through the noise, and that hit me different after a rough day with a bad saw. Anybody else have a song that changed on them after hearing why someone else plays it?

3 comments

3 Comments

oliver_wilson4917d agoMost Upvoted

You said "keep his head down and just work through the noise" and that got me thinking. When that carpenter told you that, was he talking about the song's beat or the actual lyrics about serving time and regret? I ask because I've noticed the same song can mean two totally different things depending on whether you focus on the rhythm or the story it tells. Did he say anything about which part of the song hit home for him?

xena37316d ago

@oliver_wilson49 yeah that's exactly it man, you nailed it. I had the same thing happen with Waiting Around to Die by Townes Van Zandt. I always heard the sadness in it, the lyrics about running and losing everything. But my uncle once told me he plays it to keep moving forward, like the guy in the song just keeps going even when life beats him down. That flipped the whole thing for me. Now I hear the grit in the melody instead of just the sorrow. It's wild how someone else's ears can change your whole take on a tune.

sam1716d ago

Did that carpenter ever say if he hears it as a warning or a kind of anchor, like @xena373 said about her uncle's take on Townes? That "work through the noise" part sounds more like blocking things out than fighting against something, which is a different spin than I usually hear on that track.