Here's one based on a trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg. I really did meet a Tatyana who spoke the first two lines of this song almost verbatim. It wasn't too long after the Soviet Union's fall, and people there seemed liberated to be able to practice religion again. One of my most vivid experiences was when I walked unsuspectingly into a Russian Orthodox ceremony in a small, candle-lit church, with just a dozen or so in attendance. The bridge here captures some of those impressions.
In other ways this song is also one of my more literal ones, not that you'd necessarily notice! There really was a young music teacher who seemed strangely reluctant to smile as her students sang beautifully to her balalaika accompaniment. Sitting in that small auditorium, I saw a vase that had one extra flower, which I later found out makes a standard bouquet of 13 over there.
This is the great Tony Rice playing "Shadows," which was written by Gordon Lightfoot. Jerry Douglas on dobro, Sam Bush on mandolin, Wyatt Rice on guitar, Mark Schatz on bass.
