These Boots Were Made For

I've no huge natural affinity for country music, any more than for the blues, so it surprises me to have written a handful of honkytonk-style songs. The storyteller in me gravitates toward the genre's narrative tradition, I suppose, as well as its religiosity. And I dig the tensions that arise where country and rock rub up against each other—that's where the mythology of the American West can be played out with appropriate epic sweep, where the standard oater becomes the Spaghetti Western.

This song owes something to Cash, of course, who worked those tensions so beautifully for so many years; and, obviously to "Ghost Riders In The Sky"—but also to Leonard Cohen (whose "Hallelujah" isn't a million miles from this, musically), to Nick Cave (especially his record The Good Son), and even to Alan Moore, for his classic Phantom Stranger story "Footsteps."

Is this a "serious" song? It's hard for me to say, even though I'm the one who wrote it. Because C&W is not my native tongue, it's easy to treat it as a joke—and indeed, on the page "The Walking Song" looks like an outsider's parody of genre conventions. It's a fragile thing; if I played it a little louder, sang it a little harder, added just a hint more of a drawl, it would fall apart and end up just a comedy number. When I'm playing it, though, voice barely rising past a murmur, I'm completely in the moment—telling campfire tales.

Tunewise, the main points of interest are the I-VIm vamp and the shuffling country-waltz rhythm; this particular walking song has a gimp leg, for reasons made clear below. Verses have a straightforward sixteen-bar structure, sticking to I-IV-V with occasional dips to the relative minor: the bridge centers on the minor VI, avoiding the tonic entirely, which adds a little drama to the return of the verse.

Here's the spoken intro I gave it at Jitters:

When I was a bit younger, I used to participate in the occasional amateur athletic event for charity. One year I was doing a distance walk—it was the last year I did it, actually—and at the seven-mile mark of a twenty-mile course, I started to feel this odd... grinding sensation in my left hip.

I thought, "Uh-oh."

That's not what this song is about.

But I started writing it right about then, in my head, and by the time I got across the finish line, I knew it pretty well.

The Walking Song

Long have I been a-walking
and sorely my feet have bled
There's miles of bad road behind me now
and many more miles ahead
No horse have I to carry me on
nor have I wings to fly
so I'll just keep on a-walking
watching the miles pass by

Long have I been a-walking
walking for many a day
and the Cuban heels of my gaucho boots
have long been worn away
My steps raise dust on the open plains
and sparks on the cobbled streets
but I'll just keep on a-walking
with no rest for my weary feet

And I've crossed the burning deserts
and I've slogged on in the pouring rain
and I'll walk despite the weariness
and the darkness and the pain
I'll walk to spite the hardship
though my legs have grown stiff and sore
Tracking the cloven footsteps
of the one who's gone before

I ain't walking for no dirty money
I ain't walking for to prove no point
and I'll walk despite my blistered feet
and the aching in my joints
And I will walk to spite the hunger
and I neither will crawl nor ride
for I'm tracking down the Devil
for to pay for my sin of pride