Billy Strings
John Deere Tractor
“John Deere Tractor” is a song written by Lawrence Hammond, a musician who had played in the late-1960s California band Mad River. It was first recorded around 1971 and entered the bluegrass world a few years later.
The song is a quiet lament of loss and rural longing. Its narrator, far from home and worn down by city life, dreams of going back — to a simpler place measured by the slow, steady passage of a John Deere tractor across a field. That image of the tractor as a symbol of a settled life left behind gives the song its distinctive ache.
“John Deere Tractor” became closely associated with Larry Sparks, who recorded it for a 1980 album that took the song as its title, and whose deep, mournful voice suited it well. The song later reached a wide country audience through a recording by the Judds, and has since been taken up by younger bluegrass musicians including Billy Strings.
