Stones in My Passway

Listening to a partial bootleg [Thanks to Cory Larson – see his post] of Chris’s solo gig at Joe’s Pub (NYC 2002-02-20), I was struck by how beautifully Chris played and sang “Stones in My Passway,” a song written by Robert Johnson.  Recall that Chris included this song on Perfect Day:

Gorgeous!  But, checking our collection of bootlegs and Metter Booze’s Tour Guide, I discovered that Chris played “Passway” live just THREE TIMES, all in consecutive gigs between February 19 -21, 2002.*  We don’t have many set lists from the Perfect Day tour with Yuval Gabay and Sebastian Steinberg, but none list “Stones.”  So, this is it, folks:

* Update 2024-01-22:  Just found a quotation from Jeff Lang indicating that he and Chris covered “Passway” during Chris’s Australian tour in Fall 1993:

I mentioned that I was thinking of driving down to Wollongong (1 1/2 hours away) to catch his next show as some mates of mine were opening for him. He said I should bring my guitar, which I did. We played Robert Johnson’s “Stones In My Passway” as the encore and stayed in touch ever since.

Why so few times? Another question that we’ll never have answered.  Nonetheless, listening to the song recently sparked my interest in its lyrics.

I had assumed that the “stones in my passway” were like the stones that Chris wanted his “Mama” to “kick out of my bed”:  basically, obstacles that interfere with one’s ability to achieve a goal.  Not so, according to American Blues Scene:

A passway is a path frequented by an intended hoodoo victim, such as the path to the person’s doorstep. In hoodoo lore, spreading goofer dust or something similarly noxious on the passway places a curse on the person who steps in it. Laying stones down in the passway in a certain configuration is another way to jinx someone. These methods of jinxing someone are called foot track magic.

Robert Johnson was referring to one traditional method of working foot track magic in his famous song “Stones in My Passway.” This involves laying stones on the ground in a cross pattern, sometimes with a button from the person’s clothing in the center of the cross. The stones need to be placed in a passway because the person has to walk over the cross in order to be cursed. This is called “crossing the line.”

Those familiar with the lyrics of another Johnson song “Hellhounds on My Trail” (e.g., “You sprinkled hot foot powder around my door”) will recognize Johnson’s use of hoodoo conjurations in his lyrics.   Not withstanding his imagery, according to an overview from Wikipedia, some interpret the “stones” as kidney or bladder stones and the “passway” as the urinary tract; others view it as a metaphor for impotence.  Both of these interpretations seem unlikely, but, if the “three legs” in the final verse mean what the Urban Dictionary indicates …, maybe not so ridiculous!  Whatever ….  For my money, I think “three legs” here probably refers to the legs of a journey: from A to B, B to C, and C to D.  Then again, Geoffrey Himes, whose reviews of Chris’s music I generally respect, threw this in my face:  “‘Can’t Get Off’ is a blues lament about impotence in the tradition of Robert Johnson’s ‘Stones in My Passway.'”

One final observation about this song ….  In my search re the song’s meaning, I ran across an interview in which Eric Clapton described the difficulty he experienced in learning to play the guitar part:

Yes, there’s a passage. If we talk about it in terms of a 12-bar blues, it’s in the second section. The first section is the A section; when you get to the B section, and you move up to the IV chord, there’s a phrase he plays underneath his vocal that I can’t do. I can’t sing it and play that phrase, and I will never do it, I don’t think. I think I’ve tried all my life to figure out how to do that—because the time signature of the singing is one way and the playing is another.

They’re syncopated in very different ways. So it’s always needed to be an ensemble piece.

I don’t know much about music, so I’m not sure what Clapton means.  Those of you who do know these things, please listen to Robert Johnson and ‘splain it to me:

 

And then please listen again to Chris and let me know if he succeeds where Clapton didn’t or if he just did his own thing and ignored the challenge.  According to Steve Klinge, Chris opted for the latter:  “Whitley has internalized Johnson’s harrowing passion better than most other acolytes, and his “Stones in My Passway” emphasizes the song’s lyricism with a guitar line that echoes but doesn’t imitate the original.”  Agree?