There’s a certain blue in the sky you only see right before sunset, when the day’s heat vanishes and the light glows gold across the fields in Helmond. That’s the hour when memories crowd most powerfully, and more than once, I’ve found myself walking those flat Dutch fields with my guitar slung over my shoulder. At those times, a particular song seeps back into my mind—a song that never graced the heights of the charts, but tucked itself into my heart like a letter from a long-lost friend: “Driftin’ Way of Life” by Jerry Jeff Walker, 1974.
You might know Jerry Jeff best for “Mr. Bojangles,” but in 1974 he put out a record many overlooked: *Driftin’ Way of Life*. The title track, and the album as a whole, wasn’t the toast of radio waves in Holland. Even back in Texas, it didn’t get the same love as others from that burgeoning progressive country scene. But for me, and maybe a few other dreamers on the wind, it was everything.
My first encounter with “Driftin’ Way of Life” was a fluke. The summer of ’77, I was seventeen, fresh out of school and brimming with confusion about what kind of man I was to become. My cousin Loet had an uncle from Texas who came to visit—he seemed impossibly American, with boots, a Stetson, and a battered suitcase filled with cassettes. On a rare rainless afternoon, he put one cassette on, and Jerry Jeff’s drawl filled the kitchen, swirling together with the aroma of Dutch stamppot and cheap American whiskey.
The song itself started with a lazy, meandering guitar, as if a man was strumming to himself, not yet sure if he’s singing for a friend, a crowd, or just the sky. “I’m just a gypsy, drifting on…” Jerry Jeff sang, and for a moment, the kitchen in Helmond transformed into some little honky-tonk in Lukenbach.
“I’m just a drifter, drifting way of life.
I’ve never known a home, just a rolling stone,
With nothing much to lose except my mind.”
In that moment, something uncoiled in me—a longing I had no words for, an inkling that maybe there was a place in the world for someone who didn’t quite fit the molds of Helmond, or anywhere else. The song wasn’t about the wild tales or big regrets of outlaw country; it was about simple, persistent restlessness. I remember the chorus—gentle, resigned, not bitter but wise, even a touch hopeful. Jerry Jeff made drifting sound like a kind of philosophy, not a curse.
Those lyrics—so plain and direct—have stuck with me across decades and thousands of kilometers. That summer, I borrowed the cassette and would walk the fields outside town, headphones over my ears, the flat, endless horizon stretching out like the American plains. I’d spend whole evenings by the Zuid-Willemsvaart canal, singing along until the mosquitoes drove me home. I wanted, desperately, to be tough enough to move through life with only the wind at my back and a song in my pocket.
“I guess I’ve loved a time or two,
But never stayed around to see it through.
Maybe there’s a place, maybe there’s a time,
But I haven’t found a reason or a rhyme.”
By the time autumn rolled around, the crops were cut and the days growing short. I applied for a job in the local factory, same as my father, but my hands itched for a guitar, not a wrench. “Driftin’ Way of Life” became the soundtrack for a secret rebellion: I’d play it on repeat as I learned my first chords, scribbled lyrics in my notebooks. It taught me that there was courage in not settling, that there could be music in uncertainty. Jerry Jeff wasn’t singing of grand triumphs or wild sorrows; he was singing of the in-between, the wandering, the moments when you belong nowhere but your own skin.
Years later, after the first heartbreaks and the first bars where I scraped together gulden coins by covering American songs with a Dutch accent, I found myself writing my own verses under the influence of that song. My melodies borrowed from his gentle finger-picking, my words from his honesty. There’s a lineage, I think, running from old folk songs to country, and “Driftin’ Way of Life” sits at the heart of it—a testament to never quite knowing what comes next, but singing anyway.
Often I’ve been asked at shows what my favorite country track is—the crowd expects the obvious choices, Hank or Willie or the newer stars. But I always say, almost stubbornly, “Driftin’ Way of Life.” The room usually quiets; few recognize it, but those who do, their eyes go soft and knowing.
What makes this song so special isn’t just its scarcity—though I think that only deepens its magic. It’s the rawness, the gentleness, the way Jerry Jeff lets each verse wander, like footsteps across a muddy path. It refuses to answer life’s big questions with certainty, and instead offers a companion for the journey.
To me, “Driftin’ Way of Life” has always been a promise: that it’s okay not to have a home or a plan, that sometimes moving on is the noblest thing you can do. That there are others, across the world—even a lost Dutch kid with a busted radio—who know exactly what it means to drift, and who find their own kind of home in the music they carry with them.
Tonight, as I watch the sun settle deep behind the willow trees and that rare blue tumbles through the clouds, I pull out my old guitar. I play those chords one more time, every finger remembering not just the song but the whole summer, and I sing softly:
“I’m just a drifter, drifting way of life.
The road’s my friend and I’m not afraid of time.
Maybe someday I’ll find a place to call my own—
But tonight, the wind’s enough, and I’ll be fine.”
Some songs don’t just last; they become the roads we wander for a lifetime. “Driftin’ Way of Life” is that for me. I hope, friend, you find a tune that drifts through your life the same.
—Kroes den Bock