By:Don Reno · Source Recording: The Lonesome River Band (1994)Song details
Long gone (long gone) is how I'm leaving
Long gone why do you cry
This is what you wanted baby
So I'm gone long gone
I have tried to make you happy
Still you say you done me wrong
This is it we're through forever
So I'm gone long gone
Please don't try to overtake me
'Cause what I ride will be too fast
This is it we're through forever
So I'm gone I'm free at last
Please don't shed no tears at parting
For those tears they won't atone
After all this pain you caused me
I'm gone long gone
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By:Don Reno · Source Recording:The Lonesome River Band (1994)
“Long Gone” began as “I’m Gone, Long Gone,” a song credited to Don Reno and Red Smiley. Reno and Smiley and the Tennessee Cut-Ups recorded it at King Studios in Cincinnati on 15 January 1952, with Smiley singing lead and Reno on tenor and banjo, Chuck Haney on mandolin, Gopher Addis on fiddle and Jay Haney on bass. King issued it in December 1952 on a single backed with “Tennessee Cut-Up Breakdown.”
The narrator is walking out on a woman who has told him she wants him gone. He says he did what he could to make her happy and that they are through for good, and he warns her not to try to run after him or cry over his leaving, because tears will not make up for the pain she caused.
Reno re-recorded it in Charlotte in 1976 for the CMH album The Don Reno Story, with Bill Harrell on guitar. The Lonesome River Band recorded “Long Gone” on Old Country Town (Sugar Hill, January 1994), with Ronnie Bowman on lead vocal, Sammy Shelor on banjo, Dan Tyminski on mandolin, Tim Austin on guitar and Stuart Duncan on fiddle. A second Lonesome River Band version, with Brandon Rickman and Randy Jones in the lineup, opens Chronology, Vol. 3 (Rural Rhythm, 2012). Charlie Sizemore also recorded it, on Call of the Honky Tonk (Rutabaga, 1989).
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Clicks before the band comes in, so you start together.
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The band goes quiet for a bar or two and you keep the time going.
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