One Band, One Song, Two Americas.

Red, white and blue, by the author.

There are two Americas. The America that is and the America that exists in the imagination of some Americans — Fantasy America.

I have two recording of the Weavers song “Lonesome Traveller”. Each recording tells the tale of these two different Americas.

“Lonesome Traveller” was written by Lee Hays who sang bass with the Weavers. “Lonesome Traveller” is a song that could equally belong in the songbook of Bob Dylan or the Stanley Brothers. Almost a secular version of “I am a Pilgrim”, not that it would sound out of place in a church back then, either. Today? Not so much. The themes of the song are simple enough, travelling cold and hungry, travelling with the rich and the poor, travelling onto freedom and hopefully, one day, stop travelling.

They’re ideas that seem quintessentially American — as American as Grapes of Wrath or This Land is our Land — yet in listening to the two versions, they characterise two different things.

The first version is Live at Carnegie Hall. Lee wasn’t old when he made this recording, but he sure sounds it. He wan’t young either. I was half expecting him to be 65 at the time. He was 44. The second version, which might not be chronologically after the first, is recorded in the studio with orchestra and chorus.