Written around 1970, these four songs are still waiting for a talented singer to make them famous. Words & music by Lewis Hyde. Converted into MP3 files from a demo tape recorded November 29, 1971 at Sound 80, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Please Take Me Back (3:18)

I broke your toe, I burned your bread...”

Forty Miles an Hour (2:34)

“Forty miles an hour is a good speed to go...” Written on gravel back roads in the Midwest.

The Harvest Tune (3:04)

When I was in college at the University of Minnesota, friends and I once went to Carrington, North Dakota to help with the wheat harvest. Nowadays wheat is harvested with a combine, which combines what used to be the separate functions of gathering, bundling, and threshing the wheat. This harvest was pre-combine: we gathered bundled wheat (loading it with pitchforks onto trucks) and carried it to a stationary thresher. It was hard work. The song manages to rhyme “Peterson” and “limousine.”

The Sky Stands in My Way (3:30)

“I’ve many times walked out by night, and times retuned by day....”

Recording notes:

Steve Gammell plays the lead guitar. You can hear him on one track of Leo Kottke’s “Greenhouse” album. He also used to play on the early Prairie Home Companion (circa 1976). Gammell went on to be a children’s book illustrator, winning a Caldecott Medal for his drawings for Karen Ackerman’s Song and Dance Man.

All songs © 1972 Lewis Hyde and released here under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license.