Waterbound

The singer goes out one night under a bright moon and stars, and a storm comes up that brings the trees down. The river rises, carries his home away to the field below, and leaves him stranded on a stranger’s shore with no money. He carves his name on a barn wall, sleeps dry in a stable on a winter night, and watches a rusty boxcar door and a falling star. He asks to be remembered, and the last verse promises to meet his friends on the other side, since the river is too long and wide for him to cross back home.

Powell’s own website says the song has been recorded more than a hundred times. Among the recordings are Growling Old Men, the duo of John Lowell and Ben Winship, on their 2013 album Chicken Feed & Baling Twine, and the Ithaca, New York, old-time band Red Dog Run — Richie Stearns, Jim Miller, Rosie Newton and Jed Greenberg — on their self-titled 2014 debut.