#The byrds willin driver
#The byrds willin full

“Willin’” is a song about the tribulations of the road, but also the road’s endless possibilities - places to go, people to meet, substances to consume.

#The byrds willin driver

And then, suddenly, with the greatest rattling of place names this side of “ I’ve Been Everywhere,” we’re transported right to the passenger seat of the transport truck as its driver travels “from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah / driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made.” He’s transporting “smokes and folks from Mexico” and is willing to be paid in “weed, whites, and wine.” He’s, in a bit of deep-cut trucker information, “driven the backroads so I wouldn’t get weighed.” “Willin’” is a great little trucker novella right down to the epilogue: “I been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet / had my head stoved in but I’m still on my feet.” Right from the start, geographic specificity roots us in place: “I seen my pretty Alice in every headlight, Alice, Dallas Alice.” We may not know where the narrator is, but we know where he isn’t, and that displacement what drives the remainder of the story. “Willin’” is a simple story, about a trucker who travels around the country transporting goods both legal and illegal and receiving payment both above and below-board, but the song gets its emotional heft from a strange place: geography. The endless highways of America are a stand-in for unfettered expectations and emotional gulfs and the uninhibited promise of something new and unseen.

In any case, “Willin’” may not be a standard in the public consciousness, but it’s nearly essential listening for many prominent Southern bands and artists.Īs mentioned above, “Willin’” draws its inspiration from the same well as so many other great pieces of American art: the road. As an aside, Ronstadt’s version of the song does one of my favourite little cover-song tricks in not changing any of the song’s pronouns even though the gender of the singer is different, which always scans as a more true interpretation of the song to me, for whatever reason (I like to imagine that “ Dancing on My Own” would be a stalwart on my setlist if I had an ounce of musical talent). It’s been covered most famously by Linda Ronstadt, a collaborator of Little Feat (see: “ All That You Dream”), who performed a version on her 1980 album Heart Like A Wheel. It’s been covered by Mandy Moore for the NBC prime-time drama This Is Us.

It’s been covered by the Byrds and by Gregg Allman and the by Black Crowes, and sometimes by Bob Dylan and Phish during their live shows. Now, I’m certainly not the only person to fall in love with “Willin’.” The song has become a standard of sorts for any band or artist adjacent to Southern rock. But while “Willin’” takes a lot of cues from Southern rock, from its lyrical themes of the road and drifting to its excellent blues piano work, the song has always felt somewhat removed from other Southern rock ballads, and much greater than the sum of its two minute and fifty-five second runtime. I’ve always loved the Southern rock sound: the boogie shuffles, the guitar work, the way the music is always pushing forward like it’s running down a hill, and Little Feat is surely a Southern Rock band and a damn good one at that. Whichever pieces from those stories are true, Lowell George left Zappa’s band in 1969 armed with “Willin’” (note: the version of the song I’m talking about here is the 1972 version from the album Sailing Shoes, not the one they recorded for their debut). And in the last, most absurd (and most scantily referenced) version, George plays a 15 minute electric guitar solo without his amp plugged in, somehow bothering Zappa so much he fires George from the band. In another, the straight-edged Zappa is so scandalized by the references to alcohol and drugs in the song that he requests George leave the Mothers of Invention. In one of them, he shows Zappa “Willin’” and Zappa is so enthralled that he fires George so that he can start his own band. There are three conflicting stories as to why George left the Mothers of Invention, per Wikipedia. Little Feat was formed in 1969 by Lowell George, who was then a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. This week, that song is “ Willin’” by the rollicking Southern rock band Little Feat.

#The byrds willin full

Instead of focusing on a full album this week, I wanted to keep it short and talk about a favourite song.