This Land Is Your Land

Today I saw an article about a new Roseanne Cash album entitled The List.

You can read it here:

http://www.spinner.com/2009/10/08/rosanne-cash-keeps-the-rest-of-the-list-private?icid=mainhp-desktopdl2link4http%3A%2F%2F

The tracks on this album are songs that were on a list compiled by her Dad, Johnny Cash, of what he considered to be 100 essential country songs. She received this list when she turned 18 in 1973 and until this album was released she has never made any of the list public.

In the piece I was reading, she spoke about how hard it was to decide which songs to include on her album but clearly didn't have the same problem when deciding what songs she didn't value.

She said,"They were too gender specific or they were too much of a period piece, and I couldn't do another version of 'This Land Is Your Land.' You know what I mean?"

It's probably a really good thing I don't make my living as an interviewer.

Celebrities wouldn't like me very much.

Especially if they asked me a rhetorical question like:
"You know what I mean? "

If Roseanne Cash had asked me that question, I would have had to respond:

"No Roseanne, I don't know what you mean.

I look around and see my country, that I love, so ripped apart and polarized.

I think it would be a great idea for a singer/star of your caliber to record an album of songs that might make people stop and at least for a moment remember that we are all in this together.

You could invite artists of every kind to join you and call it

America Aid.

Instead gathering donations for one cause or another, you and others of such great talent could and should do it to lift the spirits of a weary nation."

Some 'period pieces' are timeless.


THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
words and music by Woody Guthrie

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.