Sumanta Basu

“500 Miles” (also known as “500 Miles Away from Home” or “Railroaders’ Lament”) is a folk song made popular in the United States and Europe during the 1960s folk revival. The simple repetitive lyrics offer a lament by a traveller who is far from home, out of money and too ashamed to return. “500 Miles” is West’s “most anthologized song.” The song appears on the 1961 self-titled debut album by The Journeymen; this may have been its first release.

The harmony line you will hear in the song was not there in any of its version published as yet. This tune is my addition to the original tune.

Now, this is a fact in my life, that I miss myself. I miss spending time with me… I’ve tried to translate this feeling of loneliness in this video. I have tried a funny experimentation with myself. Though the shooting location was my drawing room; when ‘I’ was playing with ‘him’ or ‘he’ was harmonizing with ‘me’… ‘We’ were somewhere else in ‘our’ soul. May be somewhere near 500 miles away from ‘our’ home…

Note: While watching this video if you are using a headphone or an earphone; please make sure that you are using the right (R) speaker on your right ear and the left (L) speaker on the left.

Enjoy 🙂

Sumanta Basu
June 11, 2011
Dum Dum Cantonment