Train Man

Woking at Seger's house, buildin' on deck' Ole Vinnie-, guys now gone and dead- says "Seger didn't do Train Man," I said I was sure he did. But I was wrong that dude was't writin' lovesongs, Like he somehow didn't have it in his head. Vinnie's brother, like a hero Fetched a rock out of the swimmin' pool Dropped in there by a gardener girl, So she wouln't get fired, Or, you know, git her t shirt wet, But Vinnie's brother Dennis died soon, and his cousin too was on heroin Vinnie was a finnish carpenter, I used to carry His tools down that big hill for him. I still have a piece of wood he used To push boards through the saw, says "Vin" And scraps of teak wood from the Cabana bar, And some kind of dark wood, African and I work on he geometry problem From the handrail on the bridge How to make a curve fit up with an angle In three dimensions Right there,sandin' away on it I was playin' my homemade tape of favorite love song lyrics Hopin' somethin' might catch on with him Stuff like Crosby, Stills and Nash and Young And Leonard Cohen's Suzanne The tape was old and scratchy Pirated from old Albums, stuff that makes ya cry In the night, when they get long and lonely Judy Collins and such, like Winter Sky And Dylan's "Sleep in my bed once again." So out comes Bob, and we were barely used to seein' him, Says, could ya turn that thing down," And so of course I did. We'd called up the local radio station To ask 'em to play 2+2 while we were workin' Believe it or not, CSX didn't even have The System So they played "Like a Rock" instead.

But see, the Train man comes to the teacher in the night And all the time she waits for him He brings her no love anyways So finally in despair she said: "If you come tonight, Bring someone, Don't come alone, an Then she tries to say: "If you come alone, don't come," But it breaks her, then like a train in the night, she's gone.

All this really happened There ain't a word false that I'v said But Bob had written love songs, I was wrong Good as any Zeppelin ever did.

One morning I sang July Morning by Uriah heap Right in his driveway by the tallest Cherry trees I'v ever seen And, waiting for ole Dan, my Boss, carpenter extreme I brought Bob's brought his trash cans in.

After listening to this 95,000 times over the last week and a half, I’ve determined this is about someone who can’t commit. Why not? We don’t know, but he’s right. He’s right not to commit, because “something’s wrong”. So he’s trying to resist temptation by telling her not to come alone. Also, if he’s “coming alone” — wink wink — she shouldn’t show up, because he’s attracted to her, she loves him, he might hurt her and her “frilly little world” by doing something he regrets because he can’t can’t commit. It’s about sexual tension, he’s torn, it’s why the music goes all topsy turvy in the middle …