Dreaming of Virginia in West Texas. Dreaming of West Texas in Kansas City.
Great Big Yam is all about the picnics and harvests. Rural music from rural people.
Great Big Yam is a collective and individual effort to preserve traditional American music and create songs within that tradition. From the traveling blues to the banjo breakdown to the jigs and reels native to Ireland to the African roots to folk protest songs.
Story behind the song
Up late, case of Hamm's, wistful recollections of pines and later up late, twelve Boulevards, wistful recollections of sagebrush & creosote.
Lyrics
It's 3 a.m. in Williamsburg.
The rooms are all booked and the car's out of fuel.
I can empathize with you, for what it's worth
I've been there before, I have been such a fool,
I was driving out to Charlottesville
in the middle of the night in a rainstorm, and after that
I went out on 64, 3,000 miles give or take.
And I found out there's nothing left to be found,
Excepting the souls and the signposts
Accepting a less traveled route.
Now it's 1 a.m. in where I am.
They call these the mountains,
but they look more like hills.
And out in the starlight the shepherds sleep,
and they dream with ease 'cause
God wants what he wills
and the night's only frightening if you let it be.
Stop-time, in cadence with winds from the east
and they blow with a fervor
unmatched where you were.
I looked in that vicinity
and I didn't see anything but Texas.
This country, these places they can get so big
that you lapse and you lose perspective.
But it's only imposing if you let it be.
Now the bottle is done, I think I'll go to sleep
and remember my time in the desert.
I've tried and I've tried to leave cities behind,
there's a room out here, I've tried to let it.
But no one's that lucky & Terlingua's teeming
with toil and with unrealized dreams,
and the destiny approaching of asphalt and concrete
keeps me awake when I try to sleep.
But it's only scary if I let it be.
