Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys
On My Way to the Old Home
Single: On My Way to the Old Home (1952) Bluegrass Discography
“I’m On My Way Back to the Old Home” was written by Bill Monroe and first recorded by Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in 1952. The song is one of the most personally rooted in Monroe’s catalog: he has explicitly identified the “old home” of the title as the Monroe Homeplace, the family farmhouse built in 1917 in Rosine, Kentucky, where he grew up.
The song is a homesick narrative in the high-lonesome mode — the narrator returning across difficult country to a childhood home he has been away from too long — and the autobiographical undertone gives it a particular weight in performance. Monroe was 41 when he recorded the song, well into the run of his Decca-era classic-band output, and the early-1950s Blue Grass Boys lineup gave the song its definitive treatment.
The song became a canonical entry in the bluegrass repertoire and has been carried forward by The New Lost City Ramblers, the Bluegrass Album Band, Byron Berline, Peter Rowan, and many others. It remains a regular call-out at jam sessions and a reliable feature for any bluegrass set that leans on classic Monroe material. The Monroe Homeplace itself is preserved as a museum site in Rosine, where pilgrims can still visit the house behind the song.
