#peter rowan

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Peter Rowan - “New Muleskinner Blues” (Live, 2025)

With a tight, hybridized band behind him, octogenarian Peter Rowan showed he is still a loose vocalist when performing “New Muleskinner Blues” at the 2025 Green Mountain Bluegrass & Roots festival.

Captured on professional video and just released, the number finds Rowan seated and playing a few licks on acoustic guitar. But this song is about Rowan the vocalist rather than Rowan the instrumentalist. And he delivers with entirely in-tune yowls and yodels befitting a much-younger performer.

The band, too, is precise and genre-blurring with bluegrass banjo, fiddle, acoustic guitar and mandolin pairing with rock ’n’ roll rhythm section and electric guitar. And while David Grier’s axe is unfortunately buried in the mix, the “New Muleskinner Blues” is nevertheless electrifying. And it probably would’ve been even if Rowan’d delivered it solo.

He is that commanding.

Grade card: Peter Rowan - “New Muleskinner Blues” (Live, 2025) - A-

1/26/26

[desertsquiet]

I’m gonna link the whole thing because I just watched this in full for the first time and it is absolutely amazing. Something that you definitey couldn’t tell just from shorter clips is how truly and utterly devastated everybody looks.

And I get it. I can’t even imagine how I would feel having known Townes all my life if it’d only been a few months since I lost him. But I don’t have to imagine it, as it’s written all over the faces of some of the best artists in the history of country music who all gathered to pay tribute to someone who was the definition of irreplaceable.

I wished they showed Susanna more - honestly she should have been on that stage with the rest of them - especially when they performed Heavenly Houseboat Blues - but just seeing her there makes me cry. As does Guy clearly trying to be stoic when he’s suffering more than almost everyone else in the room. This is all just incredibly beautiful and moving.

[rgray34]

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Merl Saunders & Jerry Garcia - The Record Plant, Sausalito, California, July 8, 1973

I've been catching up with the latest season of the Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast, which hones in on the annus mirabilis of 1973. In 1973, Jerry Garcia was, arguably, reaching his peak, not only musically, but personally as well. Ensconced comfortably in Stinson Beach, he was eagerly exploring new avenues, getting jazzier and funkier with Merl Saunders and getting deeply rootsy with Old & In The Way. Oh yeah, he was also playing numerous outrageously amazing shows with the Grateful Dead (in bigger and bigger venues). Life was good for Garcia — at least that's the overwhelming impression you get from the remembrances collected in this great Deadcast episode.

Not that I ever need any excuse, but listening to the ep sent me back to those Saunders / Garcia / Kahn/ Vitt tapes, including this deliciously stoney summer evening in Sausalito, broadcast on KSAN-FM a half-century ago. The quartet sounds supremely laid-back but still exploratory, finding the confluence between rich R&B and "My Funny Valentine," digging into the Meters-esque groove of "Finders Keepers" and easing their way through a sweet/sad "Positively 4th Street." So very nice!

Of course, we should also check out some Old & In The Way from this period, too (Peter Rowan's Deadcast contributions are especially illuminating) ... so here's the group also at the Record Plant in March of '73, also broadcast on KSAN-FM. Down where the river bends!

[cbjustmusic]

Peter Rowan and Molly Tuttle performing "Walls of Time". _______________ Walls of Time Songwriter: Bi!! Monroe

The wind is blowing cross the mountains And out on the valley way below. It sweeps the grave of my darling When I die that's where I want to go.

Lord, send the angels for my darling And take her to that home on high I'll wait my time out here on earth love And come to you when I die.

I hear a voice out in the darkness It moans and whispers through the pines I know it's my sweetheart a calling I hear her through the walls of time.

Lord, send the angels for my darling And take her to that home on high I'll wait my time out here on earth love And come to you when I die.

Our names are carved upon a tombstone I promised you before you died Our love will bloom forever darling When we rest side by side.

Lord, send the angels for my darling And take her to that home on high I'll wait my time out here on earth love And come to you when I die...

[jt1674]

Visit Original Link

[breezingby]

Old & In the Way ~ Hobo Song

Too late to feel sorrow Too late to feel pain He's just an Old Hobo Lost out in the rain

He'll never cause trouble So don't have no fear He's just an Old Hobo And he'll soon be far away from here...

He used to be a Ramblin' man Just like you... Until he sank so low There was nothing no one could do

He used to be a Gamblin' man Just like you... Until he sank so low There was nothing no one could do

~ ♫♪♫ ~

Oh, don't make him ask you Don't make him beg He's was a war hero That's how he lost his leg

He killed thirty Injuns' With one cannonball Now he's just an old hobo Asleep out in the hall

He used to be a Ramblin' man Just like you... Until he sank so low There was nothing no one could do

He used to be a Gamblin' man Just like you... Until he sank so low There was nothing no one could do

~ ♫♪♫ ~

He's got a wife and five children Who live out in L.A. How they miss their dear daddy Who's gone so far away

They still have his picture It's hung up on the wall Now he's just an old hobo Asleep out in the hall

He used to be a Ramblin' man Just like you... Until he sank so low There was nothing no one could do

He used to be a Gamblin' man Just like you... Until he sank so low There was nothing no one could do

He used to be a Gamblin' man Just like you... Until he sank so low There was nothing no one could do

[musicandmotors]

Emmylou Harris – “Walls of Time” Song written by Peter Rowan and Bill Monroe