...sometimes the original's just as good....

Now playing here: Bruce Robison, "Travelin' Soldier," from his 1999 cd Long Way Home From Anywhere. The Dixie Chicks had the hit record with it right before the infamous London incident, but of course Bruce was the one who recorded it first, with a radically different arrangement -- but incredibly haunting nonetheless. The first time I heard it was on this very radio station just a little more than seven years ago, and I went out and bought the cd a couple of days later. To this day it's one of my favorite songs. I suppose some might construe it as anti-war, but I just always thought of it as one of the stories of the human impact of war...
"...One Friday night at a football game, the Lord's Prayer said and the anthem sang, the man said, 'folks, would you bow your head, for the list of local, Vietnam dead'...crying all alone underneath the stands, was a piccolo player in the marching band, and one name read, and nobody really cared...but a pretty little girl, with a bow in her hair..."