Room at the Top of the Stairs

The woman in the song lives alone at the top of a flight of stairs, on a dark and windy street. She smokes and stares at the wall, not knowing that the man singing about her has given her his heart. One night she took him in and helped him with his troubles. She talks about the past and its regrets and cries over the grey in her hair, and she cannot believe any man could care for her. He ends by wishing he had known her as a girl, before love treated her badly; then, he says, she would not be so sad, or living alone in that room.

Charlie Waller and the Country Gentlemen recorded it at Right Track Studio in Nashville for New Horizon (Rebel, 1992), with Hylton himself playing mandolin. The Gillis Brothers recorded it the same year at Doobie Shea Studios in Ferrum, Virginia, for Ice Cold Stone. David Grisman, John Hartford and Mike Seeger included it on Retrograss (Acoustic Disc, 1999). Hylton died in 2001. He had won the SPBGMA Songwriter of the Year award five times in six years, and Pinecastle’s tribute album In Memory of a Friend closed with his own performance of the song. Later recordings include banjo player Jason Davis’s Steppin’ Out (Pinecastle, 2007) and Longview’s Deep in the Mountains (Rounder, 2008), with Don Rigsby singing lead and J. D. Crowe on banjo. NewFound Road recorded it live for Live at the Down Home (Rounder, 2011).