Rocky Mountain Time

(Watch photo from Watchismo.)

We begin with ringing, declarative chords as if introducing a rock anthem, but by the song’s first words the mood has already quieted:

Station’s empty
Trains were all gone
Reached in my pocket
Waited for dawn

It seems to be in waltz time, but it doesn’t feel like it — its rhythmic sense is more the ebb and flow of breathing or thinking. And gets that effect mostly from such changes in dynamics, loud here and soft there.

Those dynamics have a purpose, of course. They mirror the song’s emotional roller coaster, a volatility that rises in the narrator, but is unprovoked by the action in any plot. Literally, the song is just a description of the loneliness of a musician on the road. He even has to fantasize his own back-up band:

The clock played drums
And I hummed the sax
And the wind whistled down
The railroad tracks

In its own way, “Rocky Mountain Time” is a bit John Prine’s version of Langston Hughes’ famous poem, “A Dream Differed” — it’s a psychological study of what becomes of dreams and desires when they’re isolated, frustrated, and finally strangled. Emotionally, the song is as direct as anything else on Diamonds in the Rough. It almost seems to be Prine’s last chance on this album to look us right in the eye and connect with us directly — seeing as it’s the penultimate cut, and the album’s last Prine composition.

But in terms of its ideas, the song has always kept me slightly distracted by little logical puzzles, trivial calculations. Maybe it’s trying to keep me off guard while it prepares its punch. Consider the chorus:

Hey, three for a quarter
One for a dime
I’ll bet it’s tomorrow
By Rocky Mountain time

So … if it’s tomorrow according to Rocky Mountain Time, Prine’s narrator must be east of the Mountain Time Zone. Right? If you’re in New York and it’s 1:00 AM, it’s only 11:00 PM the day before in the Rockies. It’s tomorrow by Rocky Mountain Time. Unless he means tomorrow IN Rocky Mountain Time, in which case he’s WEST of the Rockies, in the narrow wedge of the planet from California to the International Dateline.

Time zone calculations — they’re the kind of thing your mind does when you’re far from home. Let’s see, three for a quarter and one for a dime, so if you get three, they knock a nickel off the price. You can see how it would get alienating after a while.

The waitress yelled at me
And so did the food
And the water tastes funny
When you’re far from your home
But it’s only the thirsty
That hunger to roam

In a way, these puzzles in logic alienate me from the direct emotional impact of the song. But that’s what the song itself is about — being stranded out there beyond your own emotions, trying to work out the logistics of getting along in a strange land. Again, it’s a traveling musician’s song.

Of the few cuts Henry Thomas recorded in his lifetime, a lot of them play this same magic trick on me, keeping me distracted with calculations while they prepare to hit me in the gut. Like most magic tricks, they use misdirection — Henry Thomas will sometimes keep me puzzling over celestial navigation until he’s got me in tears.

In Lovin’ Babe, a song that starts fast and accelerates, everything seems to be coming and going in every direction, while in the meantime, one of music’s most painful psychological portraits is taking shape:

Look where that evening sun has gone
Look where that evening sun gone
Look where that evening sun done gone
Gone, God knows where

The longest day, darlin, ever I seen
Yes, the longest day I ever seen
Well, the longest day ever I seen
The day Roberta died

That eastbound train come and gone
That eastbound train come and gone
That eastbound train come and gone
Gone to come no more

Got the blues, God I’m feeling bad
Yeah, I got the worried blues, feeling bad
Got the blues, I’m feeling bad
Feeling bad, God knows why

That eastbound sun come and gone
Now, the eastbound sun come and gone
Yeah, the eastbound sun come and gone
Now, babe I’m all out and down

Roberta, babe, gone away
Yeah, Robert has gone away
Roberta, babe, gone away
She’s gone to come no more

The most vexing question is “that eastbound sun,” given that the sun travels west every day. It would be a great name for a train, but I find no evidence of an Eastbound Sun. Besides a slip of the tongue, or bad information, the only explanation I have is that the sun DOES move eastward — through the constellations, slowly, from one season to another. It takes a bit of slightly arcane knowledge to know that it does, but it does.

I wouldn’t put such knowledge past Henry “Ragtime Texas” Thomas, as he must’ve been pretty experienced in navigation. Every song of his entire recorded career is about moving from place to place — the freedom and hazards of traveling through America as a black musician during Jim Crow. The Road plays the same role in his music that the Gospels play in Blind Willie Johnson’s. It’s his grand theme, the concept through which his music is in conversation with the previous 4000 years, and the subsequent 80.

Songs like “Lovin’ Babe” and “Red River Blues” are easiest for me to understand when I hear them in the context of the Underground Railroad — they are urgently, desperately focused on celestial navigation and the clock, the technical cornerstones of both freedom and imperialist empire. And while Prine is of a different time and race (this is a hillbilly blues, after all), “Rocky Mountain Time” is part of a long lineage that passes back through and before Henry Thomas.

“Rocky Mountain Time” is Diamonds in the Rough’s way of beginning to say goodbye to us. With it, I find myself feeling a bit raw emotionally and alive intellectually. And I find Prine out there, fading, disappearing, puzzled and lost on the road, without a lot of hope of ever coming back.

Christ I’m so mixed up and lonely
I can’t even make friends with my brain
I’m too young to be where I’m going
But I’m too old to go back again

That’s yet another navigational paradox … the final cut on the album could easily be construed as resolving it, through Christ’s salvation. I haven’t written about that final cut yet, so I don’t know, but it’s never been in Prine’s character to offer an easy out. As he wrote about another song on Diamonds in the Rough, “I really love America. I just don’t know how to get there anymore.”

(This is part of my song-by-song series on John Prine’s second album, Diamonds in the Rough: Everybody  *  The Torch Singer  *  Souvenirs  *  The Late John Garfield Blues  *  Sour Grapes * Billy The Bum  *  The Frying Pan  *  Yes I Guess They Oughta Name a Drink After You  *  Take the Star Out of the Window  *  The Great Compromise  *  Clocks and Spoons  *  Rocky Mountain Time  *  Diamonds in the Rough)

Editor’s Note: This is the 15th installment of my 28-day marathon. The Celestial Monochord is trying to post something every day for the entire month of February.