“Lonesome Wind” is a bluegrass murder ballad credited to Shannon Slaughter, Ronnie Bowman and Shawn Lane. Bowman, a singer from Mount Airy, North Carolina, was then the vocalist and bass player of the Lonesome River Band. He recorded it as the opening track of Knee Deep in Bluegrass: The AcuTab Sessions, a Rebel collection released in June 2000, with Dan Tyminski and Kenny Smith on guitar, Adam Steffey on mandolin, Sammy Shelor on banjo, Ron Stewart on fiddle and Barry Bales on bass.
The song is told by a man who has killed the woman he loved. On a night when the wind is “on the prowl,” he hears it howling outside his door and treats it as a companion, since he has nothing left to live for. In the chorus she lies in the cold ground, and each time the wind cuts through him he thinks of what he has done. The last verse goes back to the night itself: his hands clenched tight, the wind and a scream. Now she comes to him in his dreams every windy night.
Twenty years later Slaughter recorded it on his album Hold On to Your Heart (January 2020). All three writers sing on that recording, taking turns on the verses, with Slaughter on lead, Shawn Lane on tenor and Bowman on baritone.
