Toe River Blues

One of the songs that we played in Aspiration was the Delmore Brothers’ song “Deep River Blues”, made famous by Doc Watson.  At one get together of the members of Aspiration and Rhonda Gouge we played that song, and Rhonda suggested to me that i should modify the words to fit our local river.  So, i wrote new lyrics for the song, thinking that Aspiration would choose to sing them rather than what to my mind are the rather uninterestingly silly lyrics of “Deep River Blues”.  My fellow band members, however, did not agree.

However, i do like the lyrics that i wrote, and i worked up a version of the tune in D that i sing regularly.  It’s one of the two “pastel blues” songs that are in my repertoire.

Lyrics    Audio