Dead Songs in Depth

    
Easy Wind
w&m: Hunter
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/easy.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/EASYWIND.HTM
  

    
Easy Wind 
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Robert Hunter

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

I've been balling a shiny black steel jack-hammer
Been chipping up rocks for the great highway
I'll live five years if I take my time
Balling that jack and drinking my wine

I been chipping them rocks from dawn till doom
While my rider hide my bottle in the other room
Doctor say better stop balling that jack
If I live five years I'm gonna bust my back, yes I will

Chorus:
Easy wind, cross the Bayou today
'Cause there's a whole lotta women, Mama
Out in red on the streets today
And the river keeps a talking
But you never heard a word it said

Gotta find a woman be good to me
Won't hide my liquor try, to serve me tea
'Cause I'm a stone jack baller and my heart is true
And I'll give everything that I got to you, yes I will

[chorus]
  

    
From Jack Kerouac's On the Road:

"And the new truck driver was as crazy as the other and yelled just as
much, and all I had to do was lean back and roll on. Now I could see
Denver looming ahead of me like the Promised Land, way out there
beneath the stars, across the prairie of Iowa and the plains of
Nebraska, and I could see the greater vision of San Francisco beyond,
like jewels in the night. He balled the jack and told stories for a
couple of hours, then, at a town in Iowa where years later Dean and I
were stopped on suspicion in what looked like a stolen Cadillac, he
slept a few hours in the seat." (p.19 Penguin paperback edition)

"Eddie drove alone, the cowboy and myself following, and no sooner
were we out of town than Eddie started to ball that jack ninety miles
an hour out of sheer exuberance." (p. 22 Penguin paperback edition)
  

    
From "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening":

"He gives his harness bells a shake   
To ask if there is some mistake.   
The only other sound’s the sweep   
Of easy wind and downy flake."
  

    
Kind of a whole other mood from Hunter's song though. :-)
  

    
I always experience cognitive dissonance with the lyrics because I
think of the atmosphere of the song as Southern, "cross the Bayou
today", but for an SF based writer to reference the Great Highway
creates the image of Ocean Beach and Playland. I can't settle on a
mental image for the song. SF ers will know what I'm talking about
  

    
Never thought of it that way!
  

    
I do know what you are talking about. I've always just had to think
that our "Great Highway" in SF is not the only great highway, and
that it was a more generic reference. 
  

    
Looked up any reference to a "great highway" in Louisiana, and found
this passage:

“Shortly after Louisiana was admitted to the Union as a state the
national government undertook the construction of a great highway
from Nashville to some point near New Orleans, and on Feb. 26, 1822,
the state legislature passed the following preamble and act:
‘Whereas the government of the United States have, at great expense
and labour, opened and completed a road leading from Nashville, in
the state of Tennessee, to the town of Madisonville, in the state of
Louisiana…’ “ 
in "Louisiana: Comprising Sketches of Parishes, Towns, Events,
Institutions, and Persons, Arranged in Cyclopedic Form, Volume 2"
Alec Fortier, 1914. 
(https://bit.ly/38NkAvu)
  

    
Of course, that 1822 timeframe would not allow for a steel
jackhammer, unless there's some manual tool by that name that I
don't know about....
  

    
Well, I'll be: "The first steam-powered drill was patented by Samuel
Miller in 1806. This drill used steam only for raising the drill.[2]
Pneumatic drills were developed in response to the needs of mining,
quarrying, excavating, and tunneling."
(Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackhammer)
  

    
I always envisioned Big Sur as the location for the Great Highway
even though I knew about Playland, The Family Dog etc....I always
associate that Great Highway in Big Sur as the location...I always
envisioned great big rocks being carved up by the steel jackhammer,
pushed over the side and falling into the sea below...
  

    
Right by the bayou?
  

    
Monterey bayou?

Suisun marsh?

Delta?
  

    
I always pictured it as Southern, building I-10.
  

    
Good points, all...forgot about the other reference lyrics in Easy
Wind in my reveries in the moment 
  

    
https://www.dead.net/deadcast/workingmans-dead-50-easy-wind