Wayfaring Stranger

#35 / Feb. 4 Podcast

Americans have been singing and playing a version of the plaintive “Wayfaring Stranger” for at least 200 years.

The earliest known version of that folk song to see print was three years before the American Civil War, when the anonymous lyrics were published in Joseph Bever's Christian Songster, a collection of popular hymns and spiritual songs of the day.

But the song’s origin story probably stretches back at least a half century earlier than that first publication. In their book The Makers of the Sacred Harp (2010), David Warren Steel and Richard H. Hulan suggest “Wayfaring Stranger” was derived from an 1816 German-language hymn, "Ich bin ein Gast auf Erden" by Isaac Niswander.

The Civil War Connection

Meanwhile, in the years immediately after the Civil War, “Wayfaring Stranger” was injected into the American consciousness because of a popular urban legend.

Many in the North and the South knew the song as “The Libby Prison Hymn,” with believers telling each other that those mournful lyrics actually had been inscribed by a dying Union soldier incarcerated in Libby Prison, a Richmond, Va., warehouse that had been converted to a notorious Confederate prison known for its adverse conditions and high death rate. A variation of this tale even had the dying soldier writing the song to comfort a disabled fellow soldier.

None of that was true, of course. As we’ve just seen, the lyrics were published in 1858, while Libby Prison wasn’t put into service until 1862. But hey, if you’ve ever heard The Flood spinning yarns at a show, you know that we, for one, never let facts foul up a good story.

Our Take on the Tune

You know, if you were trying to make a graphic representation of a Flood rehearsal, your best model probably would be a crazy quilt. In the span of an hour or two, we can go from rollicking jugband tunes and blues to re-imagined rock ’n’ roll classics of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And then suddenly: something completely different.

Now, our Randy Hamilton has been doing “Wayfaring Stranger” for a while, but it’s always changing, depending on what’s new in the room. Lately that “new” has been Randy’s old buddy Danny Cox — the two of them go back to high school days together! — who for the first time brought his sweet, imaginative guitar work to the tune.

Meanwhile, Veezy Coffman, who’s usually playing tenor, this time brought her big beautiful baritone sax to the session. That bari can rock us to the very soles of feet, but here Veezy shows us her horn also has a softer side.

Click here to just listen to how she weaves in and out of Randy’s haunting vocals and Danny’s enchanting chords.

Could I Have Another, Please?

By the way, if you’d like more from the folky panels of our crazy quilt, check out the Folk Channel of our free Radio Floodango music streaming service by clicking here.

In Other Business…

Lately we’ve had a bunch of new folks coming on board to read this newsletter. Thanks, people! You make our hearts sing with all the kind emails. We’re hoping the newsletter becomes a kind of sharing / gathering place for us, so have fun with it.

Meanwhile, we're thinking that new readers maybe could use some help browsing, searching and reading the archives, posting comments and replies and sharing articles, so we’ve expanded our help file to cover these things.

Click here to give it a look, then scroll the resulting page to the section headlined, “If You’re New to the Newsletter…”

Enjoy, and if you have any corrections, suggestions or questions, drop us a line.