Comes with a Custom 24 Page Insert/Booklet with Photos, Lyrics, and Stories behind the Songs!
From Dan:
"When I was little, growing up in Western New York, we’d go on a big road trip every summer. We’d leave in darkness and I’d sit on the front bench seat of Dad’s old Pontiac Catalina, mesmerized by the green glow of the dashboard lights. By morning we’d be in Pennsylvania and tomorrow we’d be crossing into the South. I sat up front because having 3 boys in the back seat was generally a recipe for disaster. Mom would navigate the interstates with her well-worn roadmaps folded just so. Dad would drive with both feet narrating at 70 mph, giving some obscure historical fact, the types of trees we were seeing, and where the long freight trains were headed.
When the reception was clear enough we’d listen to the local AM station, playing the 70’s hit songs by Gordon Lightfoot, Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Harry Chapin, and Jim Croce, etc. There was something magical about those drives that made those songs and the stories in them come alive. I wanted to know the people in those stories and see the places in them.
Later, as a Boy Scout, I got my first chance to go ‘West’, to Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. I poured over maps for weeks, entranced by names of seemingly exotic places like: Cheyenne, Denver and Santa Fe. In 1988 I came west again for three months. This time, as an adult, I saw the country through new eyes: Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. One weekend we borrowed a friend’s Nissan 240Z and drove down to Ensenada, Mexico. We then hitchhiked back up the California coast, sleeping on the beach and getting in as much scenery (and trouble) as possible before the summer was over.
Then one night back home in 1989 at a local bar on Water Street, I ran into this guy named ‘Joe’ fresh out of the Army, who said he was moving to Spokane the next day. I bought him a drink to help him celebrate, then he bought me one to help me help him celebrate. Before I knew it, I found myself in the passenger seat of his 1978 primer-grey Pontiac Trans-Am, headed west again, for the third time. Stopping at my best friend’s house in Ohio, I was surprised to find him packed and ready to go. So we just made what room we could, in that little back seat.
The trip went fast and the county’s great river’s passed beneath us: The Mississippi, Missouri, Yellowstone, Snake and Columbia. In that wide open country I searched the FM dial for the songs and stories I remembered from road trips past, and frequently we saw trains, and I wondered where they were headed. We split up in Spokane, and at 4am the two of us headed to Seattle, the ‘Emerald City’, landing there unceremoniously under a blanket of torrential grey rain on December 2nd 1989.
That was 22 years or half a lifetime ago. What I didn’t know then was that once I left home, I could never really go back again. Seeing the country changed me and so did the people I’d met. I wanted to hear their stories and desperately wanted to know what mine was. So I kept searching and kept moving. I spent 2 years in Utah as a Park Ranger at Canyonlands National Park. I drove cross country and back at least twice and slept under the stars as much as I could. I did a lot of late night driving and I’d love finding a local DJ who somehow knew the song I needed to hear. Finally by accident or fate, I found myself in Portland, Oregon, back in the Pacific Northwest.
I didn’t know it then, but all that time searching for who I was and where I was supposed to be, I was right there all the time. I just couldn’t see it yet.
In the studio one afternoon, legendary banjo and slide player Tony Furtado asked me how long I’d been working on this project. I think I answered ‘43 years, 10 months, 6 days and 2 hours’. I was probably only off by an hour or two.
So even though I’ve only just begun my musical journey, the songs and stories on ‘Ash and Bone’ have been with me for a long time. I like to think of my torn road atlas as part souvenir of the journey, and part guide to the future. I like to think that on any night, someone you meet can change your life. And I also like to think maybe you’ll hear one of these songs and feel that it’s as much your story as it is mine.
I’d like to think I haven’t changed that much after all. I still love long drives to shows, festivals and to your homes. I still love finding that song on the radio that somehow the DJ just knew I needed to hear. I still watch for trains and wonder where they’re headed. And I still love songs like the ones I grew up with.
I always fall in love with the stories...
~ Dan
Thanksgiving 2011
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3.75" x 7.5" "What Would Hank and Jesus Do?" White lettering on Black background. Guaranteed to look Super-COOL (!) on your car, guitar case, in your office or on top of some other sticker you don't like. It'll let everyone know you dig 'Hank' AND 'Jesus' so what could be better??? Buy 2 or 20, or 200!!
I still have my old Lionel train set that Dad gave me. It runs around the ceiling in the den of my house. There’s just something about it that makes me feel like a kid again. One of the cars is a ‘Central of Georgia’ boxcar. At the end of the American Civil War, the Central of Georgia supposedly offered rides home to returning Confederate soldiers who lived along its line that ran from Macon to Savannah. Ironically, General William Tecumseh Sherman, in his infamous ‘March to the Sea’, had destroyed nearly everything in a 15 mile swath along both sides of the line just months earlier. The soldiers had no homes to return to...
‘Thanks’ to ace guitarist Jerry Towell for giving it a touch of ‘Dixie’ and for making this song and several others his own. This is especially dedicated to Charlie Hunter and my ‘Roots on the Rails’ family. I hopped on a train to Mexico in the spring of 2006 with 70 strangers and came back with 70 friends, a lifetime of stories, a 6 month hangover, and a renewed passion for songwriting. I’ve never been the same since...
Also to that guy in Luckenbach, Texas who shouted out during my set “That’s a mighty fine song considering you’re a Yankee”. Thank You Sir...
There’s a silence in the Dixie wind; that blows from deep within
The boys are all scattered, up and down this rocky road
We’ve been marching south since Saylor’s Creek, with no shoes on our feet
And the ones who can’t walk, they’ll take the Central Georgia home
I’m a Private in this regiment, Tige Anderson’s Georgia 5th
What’s left or what’s become of it, only God would know
I enlisted when the fever swept, the powder keg that Sumter lit
But all we ever wanted, was to be left alone
Chorus
And we joined for adventure; we left with our Brothers
We searched for our Fathers---who never came back home
We fought for God, and then for country, but we never fought for money
And for Bobby Lee who said “Take the Central Georgia Home”
Cold Harbor, Antietam, O’ Death how’d we cheat him?
When so many brothers, on both sides are gone
So when the ‘King of Spades’ said “Boys dig in”, we did it time and time again
Then wrote to next of kin, “Take the Central Georgia Home”
Bridge
Some say the war is over, some think that it’s only just begun
Well there’s rumor about, that General Lee sold us out
Could the Old Man, be wrong?
The Central Georgia runs through Sherman’s path, crows are left to do the math
They’ll separate the wheat from chafe, where a boy once called home
But that day is just a memory, like smoke and God turned out to be
Like the day that Bobby Lee said “Take the Central Georgia Home”
Chorus
And we joined for adventure; we left with our Brothers
We searched for our Fathers---who never came back home
We fought for God, and then for country, but we never fought for money
And for Bobby Lee who said “Take the Central Georgia Home”
Coda
We fought for God, and then for country, but we never fought for money
And for Bobby Lee who said “Take the Central Georgia Home”
Dan Weber is an Award Winning songwriter who's been described as "reminiscent of early John
Prine."
In 2019, Dan was the winner of the prestigious Woody Guthrie songwriting contest and in 2021 he was named a rare 4 time finalist in the legendary Kerrville ‘New Folk’ songwriting competition.
In 2022, he released 'The Way the River Goes', his best work yet. Dan currently lives near Dallas, Texas....more
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