Goodbye to the Lowlands

Craig Johnson is one of my favorite songwriters, even though there are only about a dozen songs he is willing to claim as his own. In my opinion, he is batting .1000! I love his nostalgic "New Harmony" that we recorded a few years ago, and I think that "Damned Old Piney Mountains" is as fine a song as has appeared in the folk revival. "Goodbye to the Lowlands" is another favorite of mine. I feel that the second verse, with its description of the changes from rural to suburban is worthy of any poet.

Goodbye to the lowlands and the green fields of home.
Goodbye to the long roads I loved to roam.
Goodbye to the good friends and the good times I've known.
(I'm) going away, and maybe going home.

They've landscaped the cornfields, the back roads are paved
And they've built lots of houses with false country names
Names of the farms and the fields that they've changed,
But they can't hide the truth of what little remains.

There's a love I remember; when I told him goodbye
With the deep hurt of parting, I was too lost to cry.
There's a love I remember for a place and a time
They're gone like the trains that once passed in the night.