Chatham County Line (CCL), the four (now three) piece string band from Raleigh in North Carolina, have had a pretty impressive career, starting with their self-titled debut on Bonfire Records in 2003 through to their latest “Hiyo”, which was reviewed very positively here in February 2024. They have been signed to Yep Roc Records for twenty years and continue touring albeit less seen this side of the Atlantic than previously.
‘The Carolinian’ is the second song on their fourth album “IV” and features the four main players – John Teer (mandolin, fiddle, vocals), Chandler Holt (banjo, guitar, vocals), Dave Wilson (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Greg Reading (bass, pedal steel, piano, vocals). With all the members singing, the harmonies are a real feature of the CCL sound.
So, what about the song? ‘The Carolinian’ is a classic tale of unrequited love and honour, duty and regret, which puts it firmly into the string band/ bluegrass canon. The song takes its name from the Amtrak train that runs from New York City to Charlotte starting in the morning and arriving in the evening just over 700 miles later. It makes several stops along the way, including, crucially for the song, Washington DC, Richmond, VA and Raleigh.
The song’s narrator boards the train at Washington’s Union Station and finds himself opposite a woman headed for Richmond: “It’s as if God himself had picked our seats”. He’s smitten and wishes he’d known her forever. But he’s heading for Raleigh to the mother of his unborn son.
He waits with trepidation for the train to reach her station. To make matters more painful, his feelings are reciprocated as she asks him to “Come with me to Richmond, and we’ll start a brand new life”. However, duty and honour keep him on the Carolinian as the chorus tells us, “She’s in Richmond with my heart/ And I’m bound for Carolina”. The singer’s plaintive lead vocal is steeped in the longing in the lyric, while the harmonies drop in late in the verses and the chorus. The instrumental break is a classic CCL mix of fiddle, mandolin, banjo and guitar, sweeping the listener along in the swirling of the narrator’s emotions and the movement of the train.
The final verse is set later when his son has grown and he takes him down to Raleigh’s Union Station to watch the trains. But “that northbound Carolinian always makes the teardrops start/ Cause it’s headed up to Virginia where I left my heart”.
‘The Carolinian’ is a story song in the best traditions of roots music performed sympathetically by one of the twenty-first century’s finest string bands.
