“Oh Lovin’ Babe” is an old song best known today through Uncle Dave Macon, who recorded it with Sam McGee for OKeh in Jackson, Mississippi, on 17 December 1930. Macon was recorded every year from 1924 to 1930, but this was one of the sides that went unissued; it came out only decades later, on the Rounder LP Laugh Your Blues Away (1978).
As Mighty Poplar sing it, the song is a farewell to a sweetheart. The traveler is going round the mountain and promises to send word if anything happens. The verses set a series of wintry, half-sketched images — wild birds coming home, a team of dogs and sled runners, hard roads, a glassy river — beside a verse about stolen land and a last one in which he lives on her letters. The text is credited as traditional, arranged with added lyrics by Kristin Andreassen.
Dudley Connell and Don Rigsby included “Oh Lovin’ Babe” on their 2000 Sugar Hill album Meet Me by the Moonlight, with Connell singing and playing guitar alone. Barry Abernathy and Darrell Webb recorded it for their 2018 Billy Blue album Barry Abernathy and Darrell Webb Present Appalachian Road Show, and Mighty Poplar — Chris Eldridge, Noam Pikelny, Andrew Marlin, Alex Hargreaves and Greg Garrison — recorded it at the Tractor Shed in Nashville for their self-titled Free Dirt album, released on 31 March 2023, with Garrison singing lead.
