Marbletown... what is the meaning of this song?

[Lis]

Hello,

While I do not wish to re-ignite the discussion on whether MK should keep Marbletown on his setlist or not, it looks like the song is here to stay -- at least for this tour.  I realize I have no idea what it is about.  Anyone able to help explain?   

[shangri la 1]

Hi Lis,

It is based on the hobos that used to ride the rails during the depression years in the 1930

[Lis]

This is very helpful -- Thanks, SL1!! 

Hobo cut into three???  ...I may pass on the movie. 

[dmg]

Reminds me of a documentary I saw a while ago about an eccentric millionaire.  Once every six months he would leave his mansion, his wife and his children and set out with only his bindle.  He would ride the boxcars across America and meet up with hobo's that he got to know as friends, then after a couple of weeks adventure return home.  A bit like a millionaire recording artist going out on tour...

[Lis]

 

Ya, I really do think MK likes his adventures!  Sometimes riding the rails, and sometimes the high seas... 

[dmg]

Ya, I really do think MK likes his adventures!  Sometimes riding the rails, and sometimes the high seas... 

Instead of a boxcar though, he uses a Legacy private jet!

[Fletch]

"..In a hundred years, they're going to hear him play.." (My Claim To Fame) MK

Marks songwriting is such genius, I think he will be discovered more as time moves on. Just because Mark avoids attention and publicity these days, does not mean you can hide God given talent forever.

Great info SL!

Hi Lis,

It is based on the hobos that used to ride the rails during the depression years in the 1930

[dmg]

Very violent movie for the time. The opening scene of the originonal version shows a hobo cut into 3 after the train had run over him.

Not like Lee Marvin to be in a violent film!

[twm]

Is it my imagination or my poor memory but didn't MK talk about "Marbletown" during the spoken intro to the song in concert? I guess that, if you guys haven't raised this already, it didn't happen but the Bournemouth show on the Dylan tour comes to my mind - but I don't follow these things as closely as you and I could well be wrong. MK might not even have played the song there and I simply heard someone talking about the song before the concert there - or I might be conflating the two things in my mind [someone talking about the song and then hearing it in concert].

Comments and/or corrections welcome. I can take it.

[IrisRose]

Right on about the Marbletown interpretation.    The Cannonball he's going to get on will have no stops and so he won't get caught when the train pulls in.   It's called the Cannonball precisely because it doesn't "stop for anyone."     The "bad bull" on the railroad is like a bouncer in a bar.

[Lis]

Thanks, IrisRose!!!  I am appreciating the story quite a bit more with your and SL1's insight.   

And although I like the song played live (and yes, of course I would still like to hear MANY other songs in it's place...), I am still not so drawn to this song.  On the other hand, take The Ragpicker's Dream... Again, hobos on a train, yet I LOVE this song!!  MK paints such a beautiful and vivid picture of two hobos and their longing for home and love and respect.  Absolutely amazing. 

[Love Expresso]

2011, Mark used to introduce this song with "a song about sleeping rough..."

For me, it has some deeper meanings about restlessness versa having a home. To rest at sleep at a cemetery says a lot - very morbid. The hunted hobo only finds rest at a place where the dead ones are. (In the movie "Once Upon A Time In the West" it's part of the story that a town AT THE railroad is planned. These plans bring a lot of terror and hatred and death. Plus it is just easy to put the heavy marble that is used to build a great palace the same as for tombstones next to the tracks...).  So being settled is bad, being on the road is also bad, because if you are hunted or a displaced person, all you want to have is a home - the dream of the ragpicker if you like, the theme of the complete great album, every song is about not being at home, check it out, it's a concept... even Quality Shoe!
The hobo himself is restless, he just takes a little rest and then has to keep on going...

In the live version this part is excellently represented. Exhausted and depressed because of being put off the train (again), he just looks for a place to rest and be safe. That would be the very silent and sad fiddle part, or also the picking nowadays. During the 2010 versions, the was absolutely clear for me when the hobo spotted another train coming up on the horizon - maybe at the crack of dawn - he now has to hurry up to catch it... Here is hope again, and confidence - the tension rises when the train comes closer and closer and he has to run next to it to jump onto it... and 2010 this was really awesome played - you can hear the moment when he finally got onto it! (Locarno 2010 good example).
So that's what he wants. He doesn't want to stay at the same place because he HAS to go on and on. Lots of allegory in it, same as in Speedway if you ask me.

Cain and Abel, the settled Cain and the nomad Abel, can't be happy toghether... and so on. So that is a universal theme, put into a simple Bob Dylan-style melody. But the big efforts on the live versions are telling me that Mark sees a lot of potential in it obviously...

Just my 2 cent

LE

[twm]

I just wrote a longish piece on "Marbletown" but it's never appeared here. Odd!

Here's the short version.

The song is about a hobo (a poor, itinerant migrant worker) who hops freight trains (waits at places where a train moves slow, spots a box-car with an open door and jumps aboard for a free ride). The railroad companies employed men to stop this practice. They were known as bulls and were rough and violent. Hobos usually carried their own bedrolls, rolled up on their backs.  In the song, the hobo has rolled out his bedroll to rest in  a cemetery, having got off the train because he had been spotted by the bulls ("There's a man down there"). He intends to sleep the night in the open air, hoping it doesn't rain overnight. In the morning, he'll try to catch a "cannonball" - a train that travels fast and far, doesn't stop so often and is less likely to be boarded by other bulls. "Marbeltown" is a place of relative peace and quiet - a respite from his tough life. The song is likely set in the USA in the 1920s or 1930s.

There's similar theme in "Hobo's Lullaby", the song Brendan Croker used to sing on the NHB tours.

Woody Guthrie sometimes hopped freight trains and the opening chapter of his book "Bound For Glory" is set in a box-car filled with hobos. The song "Wabash Cannonball" has been said by some to refer to a train that takes dead hobos to heaven - though this interpretation is disputed.

Gordon Lightfoot's mid-1960s song "Early Morning Rain" finds the singer, a long way from home, wistfully watching a Boeing 707 take off and due to fly over his home in "about 3 hours time". The song contains the lines, "You can't hop a jet plane / Like you can a freight train". Time moves on.

[Jules]

MK said in Glasgow first night with Krusty that it was a song about sleeping in the graveyard, which is the best place to sleep.

[twm]

I wasn't at the Dylan/Knopfler concerts in Glasgow but maybe MK said something similar at other shows on the tour.