This song, written in 1971 in Ashland, Wisconsin, is about Woody Guthrie and some of the events in his life. The "Gray" mentioned in the first verse is my short hand for "Graystone Hospital" where Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, slowing and tragically dying of Huntington's Disease, spent many years.
G C
Gypsy Woody, Gypsy Woody, Gypsy Woody, music man
G Em
He had the good and the bad of life
A7 D
As well as one man can
G C
All around and up and down
G
From the "Dust Bowl" to the "Gray"
Em A7
With his cap pushed back on his head
D G
He sang the day away
-chorus-
G
I'm going to wake up in the morning
C Am
When the sun is on the rise
G Em A7 D
It's a good day for traveling, with you by my side
G C Am
Don't mean anything if I walk or ride
G D G
Because being free, is feeling free inside
Looking over my homeland
I still see you standing there
Hitching rides by the roadside
Kind of short, with curly hair
A guitar over the shoulder and a couple songs to share
All about "This Land," you and me, and a better day somewhere
From New York to California
And every place in between
Gypsy Wood sang for the common right
And the Coulee dam he'd seen
The hooting trains railed him far away from his wife and family
But other friends of his took him in, and gave him wine to drink
"Hard Traveling" Gypsy Woody
This country was your face
Sunburned, and needing a shave
But with eyes for a time of peace
With his western way of talking, from Oklahoma he did roam
Playing and passing around the hat
In his road clothes, going home
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Photo: Marjorie Guthrie Collection, Woodie Guthrie Publications, Inc.