It’s five miles from the Boyles Yard to downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Along that southbound route, the sky opens up like a greeting, the fathomless blue interrupted only by the crisscrossing of telephone wires. Bleached gravel litters the journey, and all around, locomotives hiss and howl on the sunbaked rails.
Having train-hopped in and out of this railway complex more than any other in the country, singer-songwriter Benjamin Tod knows the trek well. “That’s my favorite walk in the entire world,” he says. “If I'm ever in Purgatory, and I had to choose, that would be the walk I would walk for eternity, and Red Headed Stranger would be the record I would listen to.”
This sparse stretch, in which diesel-powered industry languidly gives way to Deep South metropolis, already seems to hang in limbo, lending to an existence that’s only as permanent as the next outbound train.
The former Lost Dog Street Band frontman is certainly no stranger to such a life, as he spent formative years were spent riding the rails and busking from city to city before settling into the roles of ragtag bandleader and sage, country-folk solo artist. Along the way, he’s encountered his share of pain and darkness, his past marked by struggles with addiction, homelessness, and mental health.
Perhaps in a way, Tod has already experienced Purgatory; it’s with his latest album Vengeance and Grace, due out today via Thirty Tigers, that salvation comes.
“I spent so many years of my life in situations that were life and death,” he shares. After quite some time fighting just to survive, he admits that sometimes, he still has to tell his mind and body that they’re no longer at war. While it hasn’t been easy, Tod says the last year has been spent recognizing just how far away his current reality is from those days on and off the rails.
