Wandering

Bob Nolan
Original copyright: March 29, 1976

When the autumn clouds come flying across the sky and crying,
“Follow me!”
It’s then this wandering heart of mine would reach the clouds to find
A bright new shiny sea.
And so I ask the vagrant wind to join the clouds and him
As they go sailing by
For clouds and winds know all the places, warm hearts and smiling faces.
So must I.

And so I search the outer bounds for warmer suns and sounds
Of songs sung low
Of promises and touching hands, farewells in distant lands
That I have still to know.
And even as the world grows old, the years will take their toll
And I still search for thee.
And though I burn my bridges down, someday I’ll turn around
And there you’ll be.

And when that day comes wandering by, along the windy sky,
I’ll know you’re near
Because the music here within will rise above the wind
For all the world to hear.
And you will stop and turn around and wonder what that sound
Can really mean to you.
And, oh, I hope your eyes will own me although you’ve never known me.
And they do.

And there your smile at last appears, a promise through the years
By wind and sea.
And I have promised in return we’d come to them to learn
Their wondrous mystery.
And we’ll become the sun and seas, the clouds and galaxies
And, oh, our hearts will sing.
From the sunset side of never to the dawning of forever,
We’ll go a-wandering.

Starting on a high note and falling in the half-tone steps he loved, the song showed clearly that Bob Nolan's thoughts were still on travel. "Vagabond", "vagrant" and "traveling" were words often used in his songs down through the years. “If I hadn’t fallen into music, I would have been the oldest beach bum in history!” Bob said to his friend, Dick Goodman. Bob registered the song for copyright on March 29, 1976.

In the words of Douglas B. "Ranger Doug" Green:

“Although he quit touring in 1949 and quite recording in 1957, Bob Nolan never quit writing: in fact, he was writing—some songs, mostly poetry—right up until his unexpected death in 1980. His habit was to spend up to half the year in a little cabin he’d built at Big Bear Lake in the mountains of California, where he’d spend his time in solitude writing, thinking, dreaming, and creating.

"Somehow—because, perhaps, he is such an avid and genuine fan of Nolan and the Pioneers—country/pop producer Snuff Garrett sweet-talked the famously reclusive Nolan out of his semi-hermit like retirement, and persuaded him to return to the recording studio for an album called The Sound of a Pioneer in 1979. It was a mixture of western tunes old and new—not all his by any means—but what piqued the interest of his longtime fans was the inclusion of three songs he’d written in those intervening years: new western classics, if you will, from the pen of the master.

"Wandering is one of these, a stirring and moving Nolan composition with the classic touches: intriguing, poetic lyrics, clever inner rhyme schemes, and beautiful unexpected chord changes. His voice is higher than we remember, but still strong for a 70 year old man, and though the production behind him is a little large it does not, ultimately, detract from a sensitive and touching performance, a lovely final encore by a truly great performer.” (liner notes to Saddle Up! The Cowboy Renaissance, 1996, Douglas B. “Ranger Doug” Green.)

Thanks to Jeff Wagoner who has all the Ken Griffis reel-to-reel music and interviews, we can hear Bob himself on his nearly-finished "Wandering". It is undated but it was before he recorded the LP, The Sound of a Pioneer, for Tommy "Snuff" Garrett in 1978 which you are hearing as you read this page.

Snuff enjoyed telling how he chose the songs for the LP from stacks in Bob Nolan's garage:

"So we went out into the garage and he had stacks of stuff. Stacked against the wall in the garage. I don’t know whether it was all songs or not but he had a ton of sheet music out there. He took me over to an area where I had picked out Relative Man. I went through and I found 2 songs that I liked, Old Home Town and Wandering. I guess I could have picked out a hundred but I didn’t." (March 4, 2004, in an interview by E McDonald)

The only music we have for this song is a lead sheet produced by Bob Ross Music.
Wandering (lead sheet, Bob Ross Music)