Boxcar Ticket To Nowhere
Sometimes the best destination is simply somewhere else.
“Boxcar Ticket to Nowhere” is a slow-burning progressive blues-rock journey aboard a heavy freight train. A man with twelve dollars, a spare shirt and nothing worth staying for slips into an open boxcar and lets the railroad decide where tomorrow will find him.
A deep walking slap bass provides the steady motion of steel wheels on track, backed by heavy, unhurried drums. Cigar-box guitar adds its rough wooden voice while a dirty Les Paul stays down in the machinery of the groove. Hammond organ rolls underneath it all, and a mournful harmonica calls across the music like a distant steam whistle.
There is no hurry. No timetable. No destination waiting at the other end.
Just two men sitting in an open boxcar doorway, making a little music while forty tons of steel carries them through another sunset.
He isn't lost.
He simply bought himself the cheapest ticket there is.
A boxcar ticket to nowhere. 🚂🎵
Music video
Lyrics
Left my room at half past four
Boots in my hand, didn't lock the door
Had twelve dollars and a shirt to spare
And nothing left that could keep me there
Freight yard sleeping beneath the moon
Heard that old engine clearing its throat
Saw one door standing open wide
Said, “Hell, that'll do”—and I climbed inside
No reservation
No window seat
Just forty tons of rolling steel
Underneath my feet
Just got myself a boxcar ticket to nowhere
Ain't got a dollar, ain't got a care
Steel wheels singing, take me anywhere
Just got myself a boxcar ticket to nowhere
No destination
No reason to stay
If this train keeps rolling
I'm going that way
Sun came crawling through a crack
Whole damn town was ten miles back
Cornfields rolling, telegraph wire
Smoke from the stack and a morning fire
Every mile says, “Boy, you're free”
Steel wheels keeping time for me
Don't know where this old train goes
Don't need to ask and don't want to know
Don't need a timetable
Don't need to know
When you've got nowhere you have to be
Anywhere will go
Just got myself a boxcar ticket to nowhere
Ain't got a dollar, ain't got a care
Steel wheels singing, take me anywhere
Just got myself a boxcar ticket to nowhere
No destination
No reason to stay
If this train keeps rolling
I'm going that way
Met an old boy two cars down
Said he'd forgotten his own hometown
Passed me coffee in a battered tin
Said, “Don't much matter where you've been”
He jumped off somewhere in Tennessee
Waved one hand and hollered back at me
“Every railroad's got another line!”
I raised that coffee and said, “That's fine!”
I ain't lost
I ain't found
I'm just letting these wheels
Carry me around
Got no address
Got no plan
Just an open door
And whatever I am
Just got myself a boxcar ticket to nowhere
Ain't got a dollar, ain't got a care
Steel wheels singing, take me anywhere
Just got myself a boxcar ticket to nowhere
Just got myself a boxcar ticket to nowhere
Smoke in the sky and the wind in my hair
Don't know where I'm going
And I don't damn well care
Just got myself
A boxcar ticket
To nowhere!
