Dead Songs in Depth

    
I Know You Rider
w&m: traditional
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/I1KNOWYO.HTM
  

    
I Know You Rider 
Lyrics: Traditional
Music: Traditional

Chorus
I know you rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
I know you rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms

Lay down last night, Lord, I could not take my rest
Lay down last night, Lord, I could not take my rest
My mind was wandering like the wild geese in the West

The sun will shine in my back door some day
The sun will shine in my back door some day
March winds will blow all my troubles away

I wish I was a headlight on a north-bound train
I wish I was a headlight on a north-bound train
I'd shine my light through the cool Colorado rain

[chorus]


Additional verse:

I'd rather drink muddy water, sleep in a hollow log
I'd rather drink muddy water, sleep in a hollow log
Than stay here in Frisco, be treated like a dog
  

    


Hi
in I Know you Rider.
1. Who Wrote It.
and What comes after.

I wish I was a headlight on a Northbound train,
I'd shine my light,.........................................

.............................Into the night all day???????

Hope you can help.
It would be great to get a Europe Tour 72 T- shirt.
Do they exist and how would I order one and how much are they.

Love the band,

Richard
  

    

I'd shine my light through the cool Colorado rain
  

    
the author is "trad., arr. by," no?
  

    
Yes, but maybe it's time to do some serious research on Mr. Trad and Ms.
Arr.
  

    
I thought it was just one person, Trad Arrby.
  

    
I kinda remember hearing a old bluegrass recording of it where they
sing about "ain't got a nickle,ain't got one thin dime"

an going down a dusty road.
  

    


John Crews writes:


David, I read through the comments on rider, and I am not sure what the
confusion is.  A rider is simply a man or woman trading physical love for
whatever is being offered, be it drugs, a lit, money, food, shelter, even
emotional support.  It is a lover without the love, someone who needs not
you, but what you have.  It is simple, for those of us who have been there or
are there now, on either side.  It just takes a bit of honesty to admit what
our positions are or have been.  A rider is that woman who attaches herself
to you for a time, the one who needs a fix and knows you have a pocketful of
baggie, the one who just got out of a long term abusive relationship and
finds a kindness in you, the one who has run away from home and hasn’t eaten
in 3 weeks.  A rider is the guy who doesn’t have a warm place to stay.  A
rider is the girl who doesn’t want to work and knows that you are responsible
enough to go to work every morning.  A rider is a dishonest person fucking an
honest one so that (s)he can stay lazy.  And sometimes, when we are honest
enough with ourselves to not want permanence, a rider is exactly what we look
for.

 - John Crews
  

    
(I'm not a member, can't commit right now...)
My name is Eli Spodek from Toronto, Canada.
I want to share a few insights into the lyrics of "I know you rider"
I saw this song interpreted on the message post as a very negative, "in your
face", type of song.
I, however, interpret this song as an understanding of life and a hope that
things will work out the way they are meant to. Sometimes even greater than
we ever anticipated.

The rider is the soul.
The soul will miss the body when it's gone, b/c only through this world can
we achieve our desired goals and strive for higher levels.
As well, the body will miss the soul ("gonna miss your baby, from rolling in
your arms") b/c its only purpose is to help out the soul and do kindness for
it... If the soul is no longer in the body than the body can no longer feel
joy, purpose, or sense of accomplishment.

"Laid down last night, L-rd, I could not take my rest. My mind was wandering
like the wild geese in the west."
The soul cries out b/c the body has brought her to a place she doesn't want
to be. She is so confused and it is manifest through the body by not being
able to rest. The soul wants the body to do the right thing, get back on
track, and fulfill its purpose in the world.

"The sun will shine through my backdoor someday. March winds will blow all
my troubles away."
If we really want to do the right thing then the light will come and many
things will be revealed. We'll be filled with an uplifting spirit (march
wind) and it will lead us towards our goal. Eventually, the light will be so
revealed that it will shine in places we never thought it would (my
backdoor).

"I wish I was a headlight on a northbound train. I'd shine my light through
the cool Colorado rain."
Once I've found my goal and have begun to achieve it I will see how good and
true it is. This will lead me to wanting to help other people achieve their
goals. I want to shine the light that I have recieved onto other people. To
shine it in a positive way where it will benefit people the most (through
the cool Colorado rain).

In short...
This song is about a personal reflection. Who am I? Why am I happy at times
and at others sad? What should I be striving for? Once we've established a
strong foundation we go for it will such enthusiasm and hope...

The sun will shine.
Amen!




P.S.
I don't know what your process is from here... If you'd like you can reply.
It would be appreciated.
Smile, Smile, Smile.   :)
  

    



Tim White writes:




Hi to you all, Happy New Year from Wales.

I occasionally check out the online folk music forum The Mudcat Cafe. There
is currently a thread about the origins of IKYR. A contributor, Bob Coltman,
writes:

"As far as I know, I'm the guy that started the "I Know You Rider" chain. I
found it in John and Alan Lomax's "Our Singing Country," arranged it, sang it
a lot around Philadelphia circa 1959-60. Tossi Aaron learned it, put it on an
LP, it circulated, a bunch of people started singing it. It subsequently got
picked up at the Martha's Vineyard hoots and James Taylor seems to have
learned it there. Lots of others have put it on record since. So far as I'm
aware no earlier version was in circulation before mine."

www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=40592&messages=16

Does anyone know when, where and how the GOGD first paired up IKYR with China
Cat? Seems to me to be just exactly perfect to go from the twinkly outer-
space beauty of China Cat to the "cool Colorado rain" of IKYR. Did it happen
while CCS still had the garage-band organ "China Cat, China Cat" hook, or
later as CCS got furthur out?

Cheers

Tim
  

    
One good reason for the link is musical, the post China jam and IKYR,
at least the way the Dead have always done it, are both in key of D,
but that's just my predilection,as a musician (amateur) to find musical
reasons. CCS used to go into all sorts of other things first, esp the
Eleven, before pairing with Rider, which of course preceded it in the
band's repertoire by a couple of years.
  

    <scribbled by tnf Fri 9 Feb 07 14:37>
  

    <scribbled by tnf Fri 9 Feb 07 14:37>
  

    

Eric Levy passes along this URL for a discussion of "Rider":

http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid40592
  

    
I'll try to paste in the most salient part of the discussion on Digital
Tradition, in the form of a post by Bob Coltman, who claims the musical
arrangement based on his discovery of the song in an old Lomax collection:
No, I'm far from Philadelphia now, as W.C. Fields liked to boast.

I should correct, and amplify on, my earlier post, and try to give a history
of the song as best I know it, in response to some of the guesses (a few of
which are wide of the mark) and questions above.

I got the song in the mid-1950s from the Lomaxes' 1934 American Ballads and
Folk Songs (not Our Singing Country as I first remembered). It's on p. 196.
Apparently I was the first to pick it up and sing it, though it had lain
around unnoticed in that well-known collection for twenty years.

Peace's guess is right on the money. The Lomax headnote says "An eighteen-
year-old black girl, in prison for murder, sang the tune and the first
stanza of these blues." The Lomaxes added a number of "floating verses" from
other, uncredited sources, and named it "Woman Blue."

So I resurrected and debuted the song. I followed the tune given in Lomax,
roughly but not exactly, changed the song from a woman's to a man's
viewpoint, dropped two verses, and was its first arranger, voice and guitar
in a heavy drag downbeat, sort of an early folk-rock sound.

I sang it a lot in folk circles around Philadelphia, in concerts, around
Boston, mostly at the legendary Old Joe Clarke's, and in Dartmouth Outing
Club hiker/climber/skier circles, which took me around New York State and
New England circa 1957-60. I also sang it in the west, in Wyoming/Tetons
"Teton Tea Parties" and on the West Coast, especially in San Francisco and
Los Angeles, late summer-early fall '59. Then I went in the Army (sorta like
prison) and everything went on hold.

As previously stated, Tossi Aaron learned the song from me in Philadelphia
around 1959. She sang it on her Prestige LP. The song traveled around for
years among a few East and West Coast folksingers but was not sung by very
many people (most white kids took a while to crash the blues).

No well-known singer recorded it until the Kingston Trio. They presumably
got it from some West Coast singer who heard me in '59 -- it's possible they
heard it from Tossi Aaron's LP, but that LP didn't get much West Coast
circulation as far as I know. I never knew Dave Guard personally but he
could perhaps have heard me in a West Coast hoot or concert, or else got it
from someone who did. The Trio may well have been the Seldom Scene's source,
as they drew from all sorts of music stylists.

The next breakout singer to record it was James Taylor in, I think, 1967. He
picked it up during his teen years, probably at the hoots on Martha's
Vineyard. It may have come from the Trio LP, Tossi's LP, or from some hiker
or beach bum who got it from me via New England hoot circles.

Janis Joplin got the song almost simultaneously, perhaps from James, or vice
versa. Her source could, I think, have been someone on the West Coast who'd
heard it from me, or could have been James. Janis, blues freak that she was,
was presumably Jerry Garcia and the Dead's source, perhaps via Jorma
Kaukkonen who was the real blues fanatic in that crowd.

Later versions, like the Byrds, Martin-Neil, Rowan & Rice and so on, all
derive from those early ones. There is, I think I can state categorically,
no other source or root for this song apart from Lomax and me. I have never
heard any other song that could be credibly a version of it.

Don't be misled by the Google associations. The song has nothing to do with
C.C/Easy Rider or any of the other Rider songs; it is distinct and quite
different.

Neither Blind Lemon Jefferson nor Leadbelly recorded the song in any form I
know of, and I've heard virtually everything by both men. However, a Lomax
verse I didn't use, "Did you ever wake up and find your rider gone?" is
heard in various 1920s recordings, and "Sun goin' to shine in my back door
some day / Wind's gonna rise up, blow my blues away" is of course universal
from c. 1920 on.

The rest of the verses sound like good solid traditional blues but are
unique to this song. However, because they were supplied by the Lomaxes, I
think we have to worry, as with much Lomax material, that they may have been
tinkered with by Alan Lomax, who did more rewriting than he admitted.
They're great verses, though, and make the song what it is.

The unnamed Lomax source (doesn't that frost ya? couldn't they have given
her name? or did they think that would have endangered her in prison?) is
the originator of the core song. Wish we knew her name so we could credit
her.

Probably I shoulda copyrighted it. (Everybody else since has.) But in those
days a lot of us believed traditional songs were free as the air and should
not be locked down. The music industry, obviously, disagreed.

You could, if you wish, credit it Traditional, arr. Bob Coltman.

I'm proud to be the guy who, after Lomax, started the song on its musical
rounds. All credit to the Lomaxes for putting it together, and to Tossi, who
knew a good song when she heard one.

Bob
  

    


> in concerts, around
>  Boston, mostly at the legendary Old Joe Clarke's

um...Old Joe Clark, 32 Fayette, Cambridge   617-864-2812

don't know if it was legendary, but I lived there, for about a month,
in January/February, 1963, until I got my own place.  

It was a boarding house, not a concert venue at all.  

Sandy Sheehan, Raleigh (sp?) Morris, John Nuese, Peter Colby, and others
seemed to live there, and anyone who owned stock in the place could
come and crash there.  There was excellent music there, but it was
in no way a concert place of any kind, just nice jamming in the
living room.
  

    
Fascinating stuff!
  

    
I always thought it was "like a wild beast in the west." "Wild geese"
works too. :-)
  

    
Should post in Misheard lyrics but I always heard "Harsh winds gonna
blow all my troubles away" not "March winds" but am here to report
that we are in the part of the Summer Season when each morning the
Sun really does shine in my backdoor which to me is mondo cool and
magnificent!...
been in this house 15 years and like clockwork, the rising Sun does
this every morning and I always marvel at the phenomenon and am
grateful...
when I lived in Montara, Calif, in the early 70s, the house we
rented produced the same effect...when this happens here and back
then in Montara, it always takes me back to the live concert
feel/experience when I would hear Jerry sing these lyrics and vice
versa...at the show in the moment, I would be transported briefly
back to the house in Montara or to this house experiencing the Sun
shining in my backdoor
  

    

Sweet! Montara is a cool little town on the coast below SF< for those who
don't know.