For a songwriter, the muse can be elusive. But for WNXP’s Nashville Artist of the Month, Gillian Welch, it was right in front of her eyes, and ours. In East Nashville, WNXP Music Reporter Justin Barney stumbled upon the inspiration for their new song.
Justin Barney: I ride my bike to work. There’s a group of us who ride every morning from East Nashville into downtown. We meet at 8:15am.
David Gaston: Hey buddy! Good to see ya!
Justin Barney: And you are invited too. We have riders of all frequencies. One of our most avid riders is David Gaston.
David Gaston: Good morning Justin, good morning Tony, how are y’all?
Justin Barney: We start at Lipstick Lounge and almost right away we pass Woodland Studio.
David Gaston: Owned by one Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch.
Justin Barney: One day we were riding by the studio and talking about how much we love their new album, Woodland, and the great song, “Empty Trainload of Sky.” And David told us that he had hypothesized and confirmed a theory about that song. David tells the story.
David Gaston: I had gone down to Grimey’s. I biked over from Metrocenter because David Rawlings and Gillian Welch were signing their Woodland studio album. I had only heard “Empty Trainload of Sky” off of that album, played on WNXP. And as I’d been listening to it, thinking through the lyrics, it struck me, “Hey! Sure sounds like they’re singing about the train down in Shelby Bottoms.” There are some lyrics in the beginning that describe the trellis so high, and a train going over a river. So I had that on my mind. I got up to the front of the line at Grimey’s and had the question in mind to say, “Is this song about the train trellis down in Shelby?”
And Gillian just looked and said,” Yes. Yes it is.”
Justin Barney: The train in Shelby, now that you hear it, it’s so obvious. And they would write about East Nashville because they owned that huge building in the middle of Five Points. They first walked into that building with producer T Bone Burnett to record their album, Revival, long before they owned it.
David Rawlings: In the summer, we came here, and that would have been, I think, in 1995.
Justin Barney: Years after they recorded that record, tornadoes came through East Nashville, causing damage to the studio.
David Rawlings: That eventually led to the building being on the market.
Gillian Welch: It sat on the market for two years.
Justin Barney: And at that time, there was a guy who ran the building and there was a guy who owned the building and they were at odds, so much so that they ended up putting the building up for sale.
Gillian Welch: We just sort of wandered into the middle of this dispute and bought it. Right. You know, we didn’t know any of this until after.
Justin Barney: That was in 2002.
Gillian Welch: I’ll never forget sitting in the parking lot out there one night and Peter Rowan was in town. We were still kind of in shock that we owned it. You know when you sit at the bottom of the parking lot and you look up at it, it’s very imposing. It’s big. You know, I’m sitting there in the car with Peter and I said, “I can’t believe, like, what have we done? This is crazy, man.” And said, “No, this is perfect. This is what you should do.” And I said something about Nashville and how I felt like a freak. And he said, “No, you are Nashville.” He’s like, “You just make it what you want it to be.” We had committed and we’d put down roots here. And he’s like, now just make it what you want it to be.
You are the town you live in. Or the town is you.
Justin Barney: That brings us back to the railroad bridge.
Lily Gonzales: This is the Shelby Bottoms Railroad Bridge.
Justin Barney: Can you say, “I’m Lily Gonzalez and I’m a railroad expert”?
Lily Gonzales: I’m not gonna say that. Because it’s not true.
Justin Barney: Okay, what would be true then?
Lily Gonzales: I’m Lily Gonzalez, and I’m a train explorer.
Justin Barney: Lily is seven years old. Together we explored some facts about the Shelby Bottoms Railroad Bridge that were readily available on plaques in the park.
Lily Gonzales: This is the Shelby Bottoms Railroad Bridge. It was built over a hundred years ago, in 1913, by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company to connect Alabama and Kentucky.
It’s still in use every day. The Railroad Bridge is over 100 feet in the air and travels over the Cumberland River in Shelby Park.
Justin Barney: What do you think they carry on there?
Lily Gonzales: Probably like oil and bricks and stuff that can’t just be like moved by airplane or truck or something, probably. This wasn’t on the paper, but we kind of named that. It’s pretty rusty.
David Gaston: The more I thought about it, I wish that I had had a different question because ultimately that song is not entirely about that, that trellis and that empty trainload of sky, because the song goes on and describes being accosted by something, some sort of thought from that empty trainload of sky that then leads her to the foundation of reality, leads her to spirituality.
She’s wondering, “Should I go to the devil? Should I go to the Lord? What is it?”
And my question, I wish had been, what was that thing?
But ultimately I’m glad I didn’t ask that. Because in the beautiful poetry of that song, that thing for her is going to be something different than that thing for me. And that’s sort of the benefit and beauty of poetry. Is that it’s gonna work in me in a different way than it works in you, Justin. And in a different way than it works in Gil.
Gillian Welch: You are the town you live in. Or the town is you.