This song, credited to Albert Brumley and performed by Dylan’s faves the Stanley Brothers, was recorded by Bob for his 1988 album Down In The Groove. Here is an mp3 sample (for a little while) of Dylan performing it in Denver, Colorado, in 1999.

I edited the applause at the end a little bit so you don’t have to wait too long to hear Dylan’s comment to the crowd:

“Thank you - thanks everybody. We did that last song for everybody here that doesn’t know anybody.”

I wandered again
To my home in the mountains
Where in youth’s early dawn
I was happy and free.
I looked for my friends,
But I never could find ‘em.
I found they were all
Rank strangers to me.

Everybody I met
Seemed to be a rank stranger;
No mother or dad,
Not a friend could I see.
They knew not my name
And I knew not their faces
I found they were all
Rank strangers to me.

“They’ve all moved away,”
Said the voice of a stranger,
“To that beautiful shore
By the bright crystal sea.”
Some beautiful day
I’ll meet ‘em in Heaven
Where no one will be
A stranger to me.

Everybody I met
Seemed to be a rank stranger;
No mother or dad,
Not a friend could I see.
They knew not my name
And I knew not their faces
I found they were all
Rank strangers to me.

You could say that the spirit that inhabits this song is often reflected on Dylan’s 1997 album, Time Out Of Mind.

There’s too many people, too many to recall
I thought some of ’m were friends of mine; I was wrong about ’m all
Well, the road is rocky and the hillside’s mud
Up over my head nothing but clouds of blood

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• Two strangers
• Strangers
• God Knows