This is the song I entered for the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma in 2010 and won third prize. I then travelled to the USA to play at the festival – a great experience (wish I could afford to go again one day).

Intro:
I am walking down this road there are tears in my eyes…
Trying to read a letter from my home.
If this train runs me right I’ll be home tomorrow night,
Coz I’m nine hundred miles from my home.

Woody Guthrie was a hard-travelling man,
Riding the rails with a guitar in his hand.
Saying, ‘This machine kills fascists just as sure as any gun.’
But his songs of liberation sure never harmed anyone.

C. Ooh ooh, can’t you hear that lonesome whistle blow?
Ooh ooh, still got a long, long way to go.

Woody Guthrie, was singing all the time,
This land is your land and this land is mine.
He sang up for the workers, the down-trodden and the poor.
And his songs of liberation still keep a-knocking down that door.

Woody Guthrie had his hard times too,
And grapes of wrath he sure tasted a few.
Never knew much fame or fortune as a dustbowl refugee,
But his songs of liberation, oh what a priceless legacy.

Woody passed away in Sixty-Seven,
He’s flat picking now way up in Okie heaven.
Yes, he’s bound for glory on that good old gospel train,
With his songs of liberation – let’s all hear them once again.

Link to track:

https://soundcloud.com/mauricebaker-1/hard-traveling-man