It's knowing that your door's always open and your path is free to walkAnd it makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag, roll-up and stash behind your couchAnd it's knowing I'm not shackled by forgotten words and bondsAnd the ink stains that dried upon some of lifeThat keeps you in the back roads by the rivers of my memoryThat keeps you ever gentle on my mind It's not clinging to the rocks and ivy plantedon their columns now that binds meOr something that somebody said because they thought we fit together, walk inIt's just knowing that the world will not be cursing or forgivingWhen I walk along some railroad track and findThat you're waving from the back roads by the rivers of my memoryFor hours you're just gentle on my mindThat's my Benny Martin honorary lick. I'd like to dedicate this to old Big Tag if he'sout there. See when I came, I'm in this business on account of Earl Scruggs and Benny Martin,that's where it starts for me. I went to see them in 1954 at Shainer Rocks Park andthey walked out there in them two-toned shoes and I've never been the same since.All the wheat fields and the clotheslines and the junkyards and the highways come betweenHad some other woman crying to her mother cause she turned and I was goneI still might run in silence, tears of joy might stain my face and a summer sun mightburn me till I'm alive. But not to where I cannot see you walking on the back roadsby the rivers flowing gentle on my mind. Let's all play it here.Sonny?The best musicians in the world here, huh?I dip my cup of soup back from the gurgling crackling cauldron in some train yardMy beard a roughing in coal pile and a dirty hatful bowl across my faceRoot cup cans round a tin can I pretend to hold you to my breast and findThat you're waving from the back roads by the rivers of my memory for hours you're just gentle on my mindon my mind