Roots on the Rails garnered a huge number of fans during its eight-hour rolling concert departing from Bellows Falls on the vintage four-car Green Mountain Express to Rutland. It was set last November 7. The music-filled train ride featured artists such as Texas songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Weston-based songwriter Syd Straw, Northampton, Mass., indie-folk band the Winterpills. and Connecticut-based Americana duo the Meadows Brothers.
Charlie Hunter has a fascination for trains and a deep love for music, something that is a bit off from his job as a painter of aging American infrastructure in Vermont.
To make both passions meet, Hunter started a project called the Roots in the Rails. In his interview with the Seven Days, Hunter said it is because he is "kind of nutty on the subject of trains."
Hunter explained that Roots on the Rails was inspired by an event that transpired in 2000 while he was a music promoter. He was organizing a train ride with a group of musicians from Toronto to a music conference in British Columbia.
"They all wanted to play guitars and hang out. But the train was busy trying to be a train," recalls Hunter. "It was kind of a big mess, but it was a huge amount of fun."
So, he decided to make it his own a few years later.
"It's remarkably symbiotic," Hunter recalls of his experience of watching a concert on a train. "American music is so influenced by railroads, as subject matter and just the rhythms and sounds of the music itself. So when you're onboard a train, you're feeling the rocking of the rails and hearing the clickety-clack of the cars. And then you're hearing the music that sprang from that. It's wonderful."
Roots on the Rails has been around since 2003 and has developed a following that combines rail trips with music, while bonding passengers to one another and to the musicians. It has run about 40 trips with "a carefully curated mini-music festival on board a train."
"You become addicted," said Stacey Nakasone, one of the fans who has been making the trips since 2009.
