10 More Train Songs That Billy Strings Should Add To The Live Show

Who doesn’t love a good train song?

Trucks may have taken over as the country music radio endorsed mode of transportation, and the advanced highway system has made the car a much more efficient means of travel for most of America in the last 100 years, but trains still occupy an important era of American history and have been immortalized in countless classic country songs. And as a subgenre of country music that has remained someone stuck in time, in the best way possible, the bluegrass scene remains just as fascinated with trains as the musicians who pioneered the scene were back in the day.

As the genre’s foremost torchbearer, Billy Strings has a steady rotation of train songs that find their way into his setlists, and since all of these train songs have become fan favorites over the years, Strings’ fans and the bluegrass scene as a whole have been conditionalized with an insatiable appetite for songs that revolve around railroad culture, or even songs that just mention trains at all. This appetite was momentarily satisfied when he played an entire set of train songs in Tampa, FL just over a year ago, but as we move further from that legendary night, the thought of new train songs being mixed into the rotation becomes more and more prevalent.

Billy Strings should definitely play whatever he wants, whenever he wants, but it’s fun to  speculate about new songs that could possibly find their way into his setlist repertoire moving forward. So with all that said, here are 10 train songs that I think would be awesome to hear Billy Strings and the boys perform live.

10. “I’d Like To Be a Train” – Larry Sparks – Silver Reflections (1988)

“If I could be what I’d like to be
I’d like to be a train
‘Cause trains don’t have no heart break
And they don’t feel no pain”

9. “Desperados Waiting For a Train” – Guy Clark – Old No. 1 (1975)

Billy Strings has proved to have a propensity for covering one of the greatest songwriters of all time in Townes Van Zandt, so you’d think at some point he’d throw a dog a bone and cover Townes’ best friend, right? If you ask me, Guy Clark may be an even better songwriter, and his 1975 debut record Old No. 1 is on the shortlist of greatest albums of all time. It also happens to have two train songs… Here’s one of them being covered country music supergroup The Highwaymen.

“He’s a drifter, and a driller of oil wells
And an old school man of he world
He taught me how to drive his car when he’s too drunk to
And he’d wink and give me money for the girls
Our lives was like some old western movie
Like desperados waiting for a train”

8. “Last Train From Poor Valley” – Norman Blake and Tony Rice – Blake & Rice – (1987)

“I should blame you now, but I never could somehow
For a miner’s wife, you weren’t cut out to be
Just some dream, Lord, you brought
When you left your world and ran away with me
Now the soft new snows of December lightly fall my cabin ’round
Saw the last train from Poor Valley taking brown-haired Becky, Richmond-bound”

7. “Play a Train Song” – Todd Snider – East Nashville Skyline (2004)

“Play a train song, pour me one more round
Make ’em leave my boots on, on the day they lay me down
I’m a runaway locomotive out of my one track mind
And I’m lookin’ for any kinda trouble I can find”

6. “Folsom Prison Blues”” – Johnny Cash – I Walk the Line (1964)

This one requires no explanation. Maybe it’s just too iconic of a track that Billy doesn’t want to mess with it, but I’m surprised this has never made it into a setlist to my knowledge. He’s opening the show for Dead & Company’s 60 year celebration of the music of the Grateful Dead just over 100 miles away from Folsom Prison itself in August, could be a great time to break it out.

“I hear that train a-comin, it’s coming ’round the bend
And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when
I’m stuck in Folsom Prison, and time keeps draggin’ on
But the train keeps a-rolling, on down to San Antone”

5. “The Silver Ghost” – Merle Haggard & the Stragglers – My Love Affair With Trains (1976)

“And every now and then, you’ll hear her whistle in the wind
If a mountain slides and many men are lost
It’s a high and lonely wailin’
Searching up and down the mountain
She’s the train they call the miner’s Silver Ghost.

4. “The Atlantic Coastal Line” – Charley Pride – Country Charley Pride – (1966)

Written by Fred Burch and Mel Tillis, Charley Pride’s train hopping, drifter anthem would sound incredible resonating from an arena stage near you. And Billy Strings and co. are just the men for the job.

“Everybody calls me Bo
I got no money but I hold my row
Some folks say I’m just a no good kind
But I can ride for miles in an old boxcar
Smoke cigarette butts and used cigars
Ridin’ the Atlantic Coasal Line”

3. “Smokestack Lightnin'” – Howlin Wolf –  Moanin’ in the Moonlight (1958)

It’s not a country tune, but just imagine if Billy made it one. There are few songs as legendary as this one when it comes to the blues.

“Whoa, stop your train
Let a poor boy ride
Why don’t you hear me cryin'”

2. “Wreck of the Old 97” – GB Grayson & Henry Whitter (1924)

Popularized by Johnny Cash when he released the railroad ballad in 1964 on his iconic I Walk the Line record, this track details an infamous rail disaster in which a a mail train bound for Spencer, NC from Monroe, VA never reached it’s destination. Reaching excessive speeds in an effort to maintain schedule, the train fell off the tracks and plummeted into a ravine near Danville, VA. A tragedy that resulted in 11 fatalities, the wreck was immortalized in song and has been passed down through country and bluegrass artists for over 100 years.

“Well, they gave him his orders in Monroe, Virginia
Said, ‘Steve, you’re way behind time
This is not 38, this is Ol ’97
Put her into Spencer on time'”

1. “Texas 1947” – Guy Clark – Old No. 1 (1975)

With two tracks from the same record making this list, it’s apparent that Guy Clark is a repeat offender when it comes to writing train song heaters. The greatest train song of all time, in my opinion, I can’t help but imagine every time I hear it if Billy Strings will ever cover it. I sure hope so one day…

“Look out here she comes, she’s comin’
Look out there she goes, she’s gone
Screamin’ straight through Texas like a mad dog cyclone
Big, red, and silver, she don’t make no smoke
She’s a fast-rollin’ streamline, come to show the folks”

Now part of the novelty of Billy Strings and train songs, of course, is that you never know when he’s going to play one, and it only happens occasionally. If he started saturating his setlists with train songs, they’d probably lose their luster a bit. Nevertheless, hearing he and his band play one of these songs one day would be awesome.

If you’ve made it this far, then I’d have to imagine that you already understand the significance of Billy Strings playing train songs. But if you’re still reading and are incredibly confused as to why train songs and Billy Strings go hand-in-hand, here are a few of my favorites that he has been known to play from time to time.

“Freeborn Man” – Tony Rice – Freeborn Man (1973)

“Train, Train” – Blackfoot – Strikes (1979)

“Riding That Midnight Train” – Doc & Merle Watson – Riding The Midnight Train (1986)

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