I always thought the song had a double meaning. Townes was a junkie, so I figured the White Freightliner that stole away his mind, and killed half his friends was heroin, but cocaine fits the bill just as well.
Does seem like this is the popular choice for our next song. I’ve tried it in a few different keys, but I’m not really married to any one key. Anyone have a preference?
Oh sure… next you are going to tell me is Chubby Checker was referring to something else when he said “Take me by my little hand…” 
I’m not married to it, but I throw the key of A out there for consideration. It’s comfy to sing (even the wh-HIIIIINE). And if the mounting pressure for a fiddle continues, I think it beats playing in E flat.
…depends on whether Chubby actually had little hands … but I’ll buy the second meaning for WFL.
Guess key would be up to whoever’s doing lead vocals and whatever suits mando for breaks - guitar & banjo could capo it, no? Bass is very accommodating - just fits around what the prima donnas want, right fiddle?
And the quicker the tempo, the more notes you leave out 
Larry,
I should have used Heroin vs. cocaine…I’d agree…can’t overdose and die on coke really.
I guess a lot of you do live sheltered lives!
When Steve Earl says something to the tune of “Townes was an artist that everyone wanted to be around and was a hero of mine but he was really into some bad stuff”…I mean come on man, Steve Earl said this after his addiction!
Townes was a wanderer, never really had a home, and a big druggie - hard stuff - I took it that “White Freight Liner” was his method of bumming a ride for sure, but I think it was used in reference to his drug addiction. “White” (Mickey) was a friend of Townes who played music with him in Houston of which both were addicts and alcoholics. Townes was known as having a genius IQ but was diagnosed as an extreme manic-depressive. His family was very wealthy oil folks in Texas, here in Tennessee his family had a county named after them ( Van Zandt …would have been his great grandfather or great great). Townes basically “checked out from society”. Even went through the psychological treatments of the time such as insulin shock therapy in his college days to try to cure his manic-depressive problems.
Kind of like “I Know You Rider” is really a song about “change” but the change has sexual innuendos in the name 'Rider" of which Rider is a sexual partner of a married person with a wife/husband. Rider is about telling the married person that you are not gonna be their “secret love to be abused anymore and you are telling them it’s over as you are being used”.
And now you know as Paul Harvey used to say “The rest of the story”.
I decided to whip out WFL at my jam tonight with all my octogenarian pickin’ buddies and I made the mistake of playing in C, but capoing at V, thereby confusing half the circle. Pretty much ended up as just me and the bass player. Think I’ll play it again next week out of spite. 
Larry you gotta find some younger folks to play with…unless that is you play only waltzes like the old folks do! (And for the record that is not a cheap shot at you FiddleNo).
You pick the key Larry, it’s yours so let us know. It would be nice to accommodate the fiddler if he is actually gonna play this time? If not then any key is fine I guess…according to where you want it…C is a bit more “lonely” where A is a bit more “happy” in my mind, is all according to what you want it to sound like.
— Begin quote from ____
It’s comfy to sing (even the wh-HIIIIINE).
— End quote
I’ve tried it in so many keys because I’m looking for one where I can do that octave. If only there were a key of H, I’m sure I could pull it off.
Newgrass sounds good in B. That might be a good compromise.
— Begin quote from ____
Larry you gotta find some younger folks to play with…
— End quote
Yeah, I would like that. Why don’t you all move to the middle-of-no-where that is north Florida and we can play every night.
Actually playing with older folk has it’s advantages. They know songs that I’ve never heard. Every now and then they’ll pull out a song that was popular for 2 months when they were 17 years old that everyone else has forgotten. It’s really pretty amazing how some of these older folk can remember lyrics. I’m shamed by the laptop computer I bring every week.
Larry I have been in “your neck of the woods”. A country club I belonged to in Ohio would rent out the country club there every winter in February. The club there was getting assessed around $3,000 per member each year, so we had a member that used to live there and belong…so he made the deal, they’d give us their country club for 2 weeks in February and we’d spend money. So I used to go there every year for 2 weeks to get away from the Ohio winters…the last time I went kind of broke me as just like Townes I ended up with an alcohol problem…in a sense that in my “college style binge” drinking for 8 days without ever sobering up I ended seeing an emergency flight back to Ohio where I spent a few days in the hospital where I was introduced to stomach pumping and charcoal treatment - alcohol poison - almost died, lost my vision for a few hours and had temps as high 106 degrees.
So I guess I view Lake City in about the same regards as I would Iraq with my experiences there! 
Hmmm… sounds like it might be wise to keep some distance between us, then. Can’t get in trouble pickin’ at home… or at least it isn’t as easy.
Larry that was years ago, not to say that trouble is never to far away though!
I go no responses from any contributors for my piece I am doing on Kompoz from here so I’ll try one more time and post the link, if no lurkers or any of you regulars don’t want to contribute a part then I’ll not bring it up again but damn man is it coming along nicely… even our buddy “Mauro” kicked in with his nylon classical…smooth as silk soudning so far:
http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/home.track.project?trackId=214946&projectId=34583
Hi - Old Hat suggested I come here to chat. I have just been talking to Ozicaveman in person this evening so he gave me an idea about what you are doing. I am a rhythm guitarist but don’t do too many fancy licks - I am more of a singer than anything else. I will have a go at singing on your collaboration if you need me to.
Public domain material is the way to go - no copyrit issues. So here I am Old Hat - what now?
Haven’t jumped on your collab Jesse as you already have a bass track up and there are loads of better mando players around than me. However if I have time in next few days would like to try a mando line out on it.
Welcome, Dianne! It will be nice to add a female voice to our projects. We do most of our project discussing, arguing, and organizing over here. We’re moving kind of slow right now while we work out what we’re going to play, but I think White Freightliner Blues has won out this round.
I listened to a bunch of different versions last night. I found it performed in G, A, B, C, and E (with G and A seeming to be the most popular).
I’ll start working on getting a scratch track laid down, but the live Newgrass version seems a little fast for me. What do you guys think?
My governor kicks in at tempos well below that.
We need to keep you street legal, fiddlewood, so we’ll have to slow it down.
I clocked the live version at just over 300 bpm. No wonder it sounded fast! The studio cut crawls along at a paltry 260 bpm.
I can do quarter notes at 260…
How many BPM was “I Know You Rider”? I’d say that (Rider) should be our top end on BPM and we should come off that some for WFLB.
Welcome aboard Dianne. Well the way the process works is we first structure the song (How many Verses/chorus, BPM, What Key) then we will decide on who sings what lead verse, who is gonna do harmonies and where, where the breaks are gonna be based on how many pickers we have and then it kind of all starts coming together…so we are just now in the infant stage of putting this together so it will start to take shape.
Although the BPM is high here also, I love the way this version is structured…I mean it’s pretty cool with all the breaks…It’s the Lyle Lovett version and it’s a good reference to look at when we are trying to determine how many parts there are/structured.
Oh there is also a “caroline” verse that a lot of folks don’t add in that we can add in also.
I think Rider was at 250 bpm.
If we use the Caroline verse, and put a single break between each verse that makes 5 verses and 4 breaks, not counting an intro and outro. Newgrass’s studio version (with 4 verses and 3 breaks) is about 2:30, so 5 verses and 4 breaks with a short intro and outro probably comes in around 3:30 to 4 minutes.
Think we need more than 4 breaks?