Artist: Monica Taylor
Hometown: Perkins, Oklahoma
Song: “Train Take Me Away”
Album: Trains, Rivers, & Trails
Release Date: July 29, 2022
Label: Horton Records
In Their Words: “I think this is my homage to my older family members who took to the trains during the Great Depression to find work… and the coming home, not ever wanting to leave home again. Jimmy LaFave called me one day years ago and asked if I had a song for a children’s album. I said I’d think about it and decided to write a song with states and things that they are known for, with a Woody Guthrie spin on it, as I have written songs before. The album he had heard about had all the songs it needed before he even suggested it, so I just started to play it at home.
“One night I was staying at the beautiful old railroad depot that someone had donated to my Cherokee Maidens bandmate Robin Macy and her Bartlett Arboretum in Belle Plaine, Kansas, south of Wichita, where she and her husband Kenny White live. We had gigs the next week and so the whole band met there to travel. She had a little guest room in the old depot. What a magical place the arboretum was to call my second home! I walked around by myself in the depot, strumming the guitar and started singing the children’s song I had written, thinking — it really needs something to make a song worthy of a set list. Ha ha! For my own band, The Red Dirt Ramblers. It needed a chorus. A change from the verses in a big way. So I went down to a minor chord. That usually help spark the writing senses 😉 I came up with a chorus right there late one night in the old train depot! I scrubbed on that chorus a bit that night and the next morning before we loaded up, I played it for Robin. She loved it! So I finished another of my train songs in an old train depot, the train tracks right there blowin’ throughout the night, shaking the timbers of the building.” — Monica Taylor
