“Redwood Hill” is a Gordon Lightfoot song. The Canadian singer-songwriter recorded it for Summer Side of Life, his sixth studio album, made at Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville between December 1970 and April 1971 and released by Reprise in May 1971 with Joe Wissert producing. Every song on the album is his, and his own arrangement of “Redwood Hill” already has elements of bluegrass in it.
The song is a small parable. On a rainy day the singer climbs Redwood Hill to get above the ground and talk with Mother Nature. She tells him of her love for the children in her care and of her deep worry about people like him; in tears, she says she cannot change what she is for anyone. He tries to comfort her and fails, and walks back down the hill in the rain, sure he will not forget the day she cried.
The Country Gentlemen took it up within months. They recorded it on 21 October 1971 at Roy Homer & Associates in Clinton, Maryland, with Charlie Waller singing lead and playing guitar, Doyle Lawson (mandolin) and Bill Emerson (banjo) singing harmony, and Bill Yates on bass. It was issued in 1972 on The Award-Winning Country Gentlemen (Rebel SLP 1506), and a live performance appears on the band’s Live in Japan (Rebel, 1988).
Bluegrass bands have recorded it many times since. Betty Fisher and the Dixie Bluegrass Band put it on Born to Be Free (K-Ark, 1974), and Bill Yates opened his 2006 album The Country Gentlemen Tribute (MasterShield) with it. Banjo player Russ Carson included it on Last Chance (Patuxent, April 2011), sung by Brandon Rickman with Jeff Parker on harmony, Michael Cleveland on fiddle, Dominick Leslie on mandolin, Jake Stargel on guitar and Marshall Wilborn on bass.
