Indiana Road (1987) – Fred Eaglesmith

I first heard Indiana Road through Christian’s post The Sunday Six in February 2025. It stopped me in my tracks. This is pure country-rock storytelling – long, slow-burning, and unapologetically rough around the edges.

The song tells the story of a Canadian farmer and his partner living through hard times. A government official turns up and tells them they must leave their land so it can be turned into a holiday park. The narrator pushes back, threatening to meet the man with a gun in his hand out on Indiana Road. But the confrontation never happens. The official backs away, saying he won’t sink that low. What’s left is the fallout: the farmer’s partner heads back to Calgary to be with her family, and in time she disappears from his life altogether. The narrator ends up alone, drifting into a kind of self-imposed exile.

Indiana Road reminds me of the long-form songs Neil Young would later return to – Ramada Inn and Clementine come to mind – especially in the vocal delivery, the story-telling and melody. What’s striking is that Eaglesmith did this years earlier. The music in Indiana Road is raw and biting and the instruments grind and scrape along with the story, matching the anger and frustration in the lyrics.

Eaglesmith is described as an alternative country songwriter, and that label fits here. Indiana Road, the title track of his third album, touches on many themes he returns to again and again: rural life, old vehicles, people on the fringe, love that slips away, and lives shaped by bad luck and hard choices. Eaglesmith, one of nine children, was raised by a farming family near Guelph in rural Southern Ontario. He began playing the guitar at age 12.

Well me and the girl we had a little farm south of the river road
A little single shack and some cattle in the barn and we grew our own food
Didn’t have any money, but it never crossed our minds
We grew to share and we were happy there just watching the years go by
Until one day I come home there was a big black car parked out by my backdoor
And a government man with a fat cigar said we couldn’t live there anymore
Said they’d pay us for the land but never for the work we did
And they were gonna turn it in to a holiday park and a drag-strip for the kids

I told him, I would meet him on the Indiana road with a gun in my hand but he never showed
Said he couldn’t bring himself to sink himself that low
I told him, I would meet him on the Indiana road with a gun in my hand but he never showed
He went back to Ottawa or Toronto or wherever it is they go

Well we wired ahead and the girl’s family said to come back to Calgary
We decided that she would go on back there without me
And I’ll never forget those tears in her eyes as I held her face in my hand
I turned around and I headed for town and I never looked back again

I told him, I would meet him on the Indiana road with a gun in my hand but he never showed
Said he couldn’t bring himself to sink himself that low
I told him, I would meet him on the Indiana road with a gun in my hand but he never showed
He went back to Ottawa or Toronto or wherever it is they go

Now I live in an old Ford van at the end of a dead end road
And the girl she stopped sending letters must be seven years or more
Me, I, spend a lot of time down on the Indiana ya know
And I draw a bead but there ain’t no need I don’t shoot anymore

I told him, I would meet him on the Indiana road with a gun in my hand but he never showed
Said he couldn’t bring himself to sink himself that low
I told him, I would meet him on the Indiana road with a gun in my hand but he never showed
He went back to Ottawa or Toronto or wherever it is they go
He went back to Ottawa or Toronto or wherever it is they go
He went back to Ottawa or Toronto or wherever it is they go

References:
1. Fred Eaglesmith – Wikipedia