Todd DeFeo • A Guy Walks Into a Train Museum
- Roll Away Train
- Face Mask Blues
- Talking MCL
- New York Train
- Down in the Creek
- I Want to be a Bureaucrat
- Talking Working on the Railroad Blues
- An Unanticipated Instrumental
- Another Cup of Coffee
- The Iron Horse
- Off the Rails
- We’re Living in a Tabloid World
- Brother, Can You Spare a Sign?
- Looking for a Bailout
- Waiting on My Train to Come
All songs written by Todd DeFeo (ASCAP).
Recorded live at the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, Georgia, on August 2, 2020. This is a soundboard recording.
The Story Behind A Guy Walks Into a Train Museum
Recorded Aug. 2, 2020, during a special event at the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, Georgia, A Guy Walks Into a Train Museum brought together Todd DeFeo’s work as a songwriter and railroad historian.
Performing solo on guitar, harmonica and vocals, DeFeo mixed original songs with traditional railroad and blues material before a live audience. The album selected 15 original performances from the longer soundboard recording, preserving the humor and spontaneity of the show.
The concert also reflected the unusual circumstances of 2020. “Face Mask Blues” addressed the COVID-19 pandemic directly and humorously. During the performance, DeFeo placed a face mask on the audience-facing side of his microphone, turning one of the era’s most recognizable objects into part of the stage presentation.
Many of the songs were inspired by railroad histories DeFeo had written, and several had been performed during an earlier museum appearance on March 24, 2019. Other material reached further back. “Looking for a Bailout” was first recorded in January 2009, while “We’re Living in a Tabloid World” originated during the 1998 Running Home period.
“An Unanticipated Instrumental” provided a brief musical interlude during the otherwise lyric-driven set.
Released as a limited CD around December 2020, the album was published online July 2, 2024, through a subscriber publication of Railfanning.org. The result is part railway concert, part folk-blues record and part musical extension of DeFeo’s historical writing.