Daddy's blue bandana

Wore me to Montana and back

It was a tiny little token that he

Picked up while roamin the tracks

All that I carry around

I should be burying now, but I'm bound

By the strings on the things

I keep movin, I'm movin around

I got some shirts my mama told me

Were hers when she was only a kid

Livin on the river like her

Brother and her sisters did

And I should let them go

Because the best of clothes do not last

But they got the strings to the things

That are tying my heart to her past

I got a seashell from an island

That I picked up while lying on sand

It cut into my fingers trying to

Hide it from the beach diggers' hands

And I would surely discard it

Were it not for the scar that it left

Now there is a string on that thing

That my body will not let me forget

I got pictures in a shoebox

Too old but too new not to pitch

From a restaurant in Baltimore

And views upon the Sagamore Bridge

They are just items, I'm sure

But they conjure up more than their weight

They got the strings to the things

And the people I ain't seeing these days

All my lover gives me gonna

Come to Mississippi one day

These sentimental feelings

Are gonna put me in my grave

Because the trinkets I own are

Sinking me and the boat that I row

And the strings on the things

That I own can't keep me afloat

Daddy's blue bandana

Wore me to Montana and back

It was a tiny little token that he

Picked up while roamin the tracks

All that I carry around

I should be burying now, but I'm bound

By the strings on the things

I keep movin, I'm movin around

By the strings on the things

I keep movin, I'm movin around.By the strings on the things

I keep movin, I'm movin around