The Top of the Stairs (Blacksburg, Virginia)

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This is my earliest live recording (around 1980); it’s easy to tell how nervous I am. My friend, Rob Northrup, and I would play on Tuesdays in a local Virginia Tech dive bar, The Top of the Stairs. Our poorly attended lunchtime performances were entirely informal (Note Rob’s comment: “Nine Eric Pappas fans can’t be wrong.”) The good guitar playing on these cuts is Rob’s.

Paradise (John Prine, 1971)

John Prine (born October 10, 1946, in Maywood, Illinois) is an American country/folk singer-songwriter. He has been active as a recording artist and live performer since the early 1970s. Known for being culturally irreverent, this is one of his more serious songs.

When I was a child, my family would travel down
To western Kentucky where my parents were born
There's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that my memories are worn

Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie hill
Where the air smelled like snakes, and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Well, the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and they stripped all the land
Well they dug for their coal ‘till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man

Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam
I'd be halfway to heaven with paradise waiting
Just five miles away from wherever I am

Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Where I'm Bound (Tom Paxton, 1971)

It’s a long and dusty road
It’s a hot and heavy load
And the folks I'm meet ain’t always kind

Some are bad and some are good
Some have done the best they could
Some have tried to ease my troublin' mind

And I can't help but wonder
Where I'm bound
Where I'm bound
Can't help but wonder where I'm bound

I've been around this land
Just doin' the best I can
Trying to find
What I was meant to do

And the faces that I see
Are as worried as can be
And it looks like they are wondering, too

And I can't help but wonder
Where I'm bound
Where I'm bound
Can't help but wonder where I'm bound

I had a gal one time
She had lips like sherry wine
And I loved her till my heart went plum insane

But I was too blind to see
She was drifting away from me
And one day she left on the morning train

And I can't help but wonder
Where I'm bound
Where I'm bound
Can't help but wonder where I'm bound

I've got a buddy from home
But he started out to roam
And I hear he's out by the Frisco Bay

Sometimes when I've had a few
His voice comes singing through
And I'm going out to see him some old day

And I can't help but wonder
Where I'm bound
Where I'm bound
I can't help but wonder where I'm bound

Well, if you see me passing by
And you stop and wonder why
And you wish that you were a rambler, too

Nail your shoes to the kitchen floor
Lace ‘em up and bar the door
Thank your stars for the roof that's over you

And I can't help but wonder
Where I'm bound
Where I'm bound
Can't help but wonder where I'm bound