Famous song by Johnny Cash, reworked with lyrics by Geordie

A new Geordie version of a classic country song has been released, inspired by the Tyne and Wear Metro.

A local mandolin group rewrote “I've Been Everywhere” by replacing a subway ride with a trip across North America. The most famous version of “I've Been Everywhere” was performed by legendary American musician Johnny Cash.

Tom Cronin, musical director of the Tyneside Mandolin Orchestra, had the idea of ​​reworking the song and including the names of all the subway stations.

The Metro version explores the famous Metro system from South Hylton to the airport on the green line and to South Shields and St James on the yellow line. The orchestra has recorded it and released it on its YouTube channel.

“I've Been Everywhere” was written by Australian country singer Geoff Mack in 1959 and mentions numerous places in his country. Fellow Australian Lucky Starr popularized the song with a hit version in 1962.

It reached new heights that same year when Canadian-American country legend Hank Snow released a new version of it.

Since then, many artists have covered the song, adding different lyrics about their home countries. In 1996, Johnny Cash covered the song on his album “Unchained,” which was a huge hit and earned him a Grammy for “Best Country Album” of the year.

The idea for the Geordie version of the song came from Tom Cronin, musical director of the Tyneside Mandolin Orchestra based in Jesmond in Newcastle.

Last year, Jesmond was one of the stops where a group of young artists from the Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art in Gateshead exhibited their artworks.

A recent nod to Geordie culture came from rail operator Lumo, which offers the uniquely north-eastern delicacy of ‘stottie’ sandwiches on its train services between Edinburgh and London.

Everyone in our group really enjoyed working on the song and then performing it. It was just a lot of fun.

I had heard the song on the radio one day and came up with the idea of ​​somehow reworking it and creating a localised version. The idea was to replace the American locations with tube stations in Tyne and Wear and we set about this task as a group.

The challenge was to squeeze our lyrics into the rhythm of the song and then adapt the chorus. I'm really happy with the result.

We are delighted that Nexus liked the song and asked us to play it live for their customers at Jesmond Metro Station.

Tom Cronin, Musical Director of the Tyneside Mandolin Orchestra