Butch Hancock - Boxcars

 Butch Hancock is a country/folk music recording artist and song writer. He was born July 12, 1945 in Lubbock, Texas. Hancock is a member of The Flatlanders along with Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, but he has principally performed a solo career.


Hancock entered architecture school but dropped out in 1968 and worked for nearly a year driving a tractor on his father's farm. He recalls that the experience of elemental simplicity and reading books opened up the metaphysical universe for him.


In 1972, he formed The Flatlanders together with his old high school friends. Although critics were positive, the enterprise was not successful and they disbanded the following year. Hancock continued to write songs and in 1978 he founded a recording company, Rainlight Records and released his first solo album, West Texas Waltzes and Dust-Blown Tractor Tunes. He continued to bring out albums with folk tunes, first with only guitar and harmonica and subsequently with expanded use of instruments and arrangements. From the late 1990s he has reappeared with the Flatlanders, with whom he was to release a series of albums in 2004.

Hancock lived in Austin, a place congenial to his progressive country style, for a couple of decades until he moved to the ghosttown region of Terlingua, Texas in the '90s, preferring more rural environs.

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Butch Hancock: Boxcars





Well I gave all my money to the banker this month
Now I got no more money to spend
She smiled when she saw me comin' through that door
When I left she said, "Come back again."
I watched them lonesome boxcar wheels
Turnin' down the tracks out of town
And it's on that lonesome railroad track
I'm gonna lay my burden down.

I was raised on a farm the first years of my life
Life was pretty good they say
I'll probably live to be some ripe ol' age
If death'll stay out of my way
This world can take my money and time
But it sure can't take my soul
I'm goin' down to the railroad tracks
Watch them lonesome boxcars roll

There's some big ol' Buicks at the Baptist church
Cadillacs at the Church of Christ
I parked my camel by an ol' haystack
I'll be lookin for that needle all night
There ain't gonna be no radial tires
Turnin' down the streets of gold
I'm goin down to the railroad tracks
And watch them lonesome boxcars roll

Now if you ever heard the whistle on a fast freight train
Beatin' out a beautiful tune
If you ever seen the cold blue railroad tracks
Shinin' by the light of the moon
If you ever felt the locomotive shake the ground
I know you don't have to be told
Why I'm goin down to the railroad tracks
And watch them lonesome boxcars roll.

Yeah, I'm goin down to the railroad tracks
Watch them lonesome boxcars roll