Virginia bluegrass songstress Olivia Jo has a new single, one she wrote called Train To Nowhere.
The talented young artist has been turning heads wherever she performs since returning to the bluegrass music of her youth after a brief flirtation with country music.
She admits that the “train song” genre can be a little tired, so she turned this one into something akin to a very bad dream.
“There are plenty of bluegrass songs out there about trains, so when I started writing Train to Nowhere, I knew I had to write something different than what has already been done. I decided I wanted to take the song in an eerie direction. It is a bluegrass song after all — so I created a ghost story that could be told like a spooky Appalachian folk tale.
The story starts with a man running from his awful past with nowhere else to go, so he boards a mysterious train hoping to get far away from anything and anyone that reminds him of the things he wants to forget. On this train, he encounters the ghosts from his past — memories of the lives he took that he can’t escape, no matter how hard he tries. By the end of the song, you realize that when you get on the Train to Nowhere, you can never get off. Now the man is trapped on this never-ending ride, forever tormented by his own shame and regret of the terrible things he has done.
The song is open to some deeper interpretation, though. What really happened to the man? Does he see actual ghosts on the train? Is all of this in his head, or is the Train to Nowhere a real ghost train for lost souls looking for a way out?”
Olivia Jo cut the song with some powerful studio pickers. Anthony Howell is on guitar, with Scott Vestal on banjo, Andy Leftwich on fiddle and mandolin, and Jeff Partin on bass. Colton Baker adds harmony vocals.
Have a listen.
Train To Nowhere will be available soon from popular download and streaming services online, and is offered now to radio programmers via AirPlay Direct.
