Blue Kentucky Wind

The lyric is a ghost story. On a rainy night in a cabin the singer thinks he sees a woman’s face at the window pane, calling his name. She disappeared without a trace a year ago to the day, and some say a man from Tennessee took her. Now her spirit moves through the tall pines and comes through his door, and he hears her “howlin’ in the holler” as she blows in the blue Kentucky wind. He dreams of her dressed in white by a mountain stream and wakes in a cold sweat, “reliving what I’ll always regret.” The last verse takes him back into the woods, to two graves by the water, where he pays his respects to Marie and curses the man from Tennessee.

Lou Reid & Carolina made it the opening track of their 1996 Rebel album Lou Reid & Carolina, recorded at Doobie Shea Studio in Ferrum, Virginia, and produced by the band. Reid sang lead and played guitar, Alan Bibey played mandolin, Gena Britt banjo and Randy Barnes bass, with Aubrey Haynie on fiddle and viola; all four band members sang on it.