My favorite song from this legendary North American, well, band. Kind of a Grapes of Wrath theme told from the point of view of a farmer who has been through a rough stretch of late: weather too dry for his crops, his barn burned down, and his horse Jethro went mad. He is persuaded to join a farmers union, that he hopes will at least provide a means for him to survive this bad luck and keep going. It is a tense situation for him. He prays for rain. In the meantime, the mighty King Harvest has surely come, as all the signs are creeping out to announce the coming harvest; for the poor farmer, it feels like a storm is stirring, not a party. The leaves of the magnolia trees have that scent about them, the wind is changing, creepy scarecrows lurk about, and there is an eeriness about the 'carnival on the edge of town.' I hope the union has his back.
Musically, we've got Levon and Rick providing the hushed reverential chorusus and and some tense yet funky interplay between Robbie and Garth. Throughout we have Richard's pleading vocals trying to hold it all together. This song get me thinking about Hoosiers, with those scenes of rural Indiana. Cool late autumn days, lots of work getting finished up, and then nothing but high school basketball teams crisscrossing through the harvested farmlands. Or Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska.
Here we see The Band in their Sunday best, getting ready to celebrate with the King:
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