In the autumn of 1981, when the canals of Helmond took on that sleepy, golden shimmer and a chilly wind signaled the approach of winter, I heard a song on the old radio perched atop the counter of Café ’t Vinkje. I can still picture the place: cigarette smoke swirled beneath brown glass lamps, and the air was thick with stories. While most folks in Helmond got their country fix with the big American chart toppers—your Dolly, your Willie—I’ve always been drawn to the songs that never quite made it, the underdogs, the ones you might call hidden bones in the rich stew of country music history.
That afternoon, a scratchy, plaintive voice cut through the static. I still remember the moment with chilling clarity. The song was “Gravel Roads of Yesterday,” recorded by Lee Clayton in 1981. Now, Lee Clayton might ring a bell for some diehards—he wrote “Ladies Love Outlaws,” made famous by Waylon Jennings—but “Gravel Roads of Yesterday” was tucked away on his album *Border Affair*, never quite finding its place in the mainstream. The song opened like this:
*”I’ve been walking gravel roads of yesterday,
Dust in my boots and the memories won’t fade,
All the fences I jumped, all the deals I made,
I’m bound to keep on rolling till I find my way.”*
I froze as those lines poured out of the battered speaker, a six-string confession that understood the ache under my ribs. Like Lee, I was a stranger to the highways of Nashville, more at home picking a battered Martin in the backroom of ‘t Vinkje, or amongst the low fields of Noord-Brabant. Yet those lyrics told my life story—restless, a little rough around the edges, shaped by places and people long gone.
The power of country is not in its grandeur, but in its direct honesty. Country music speaks with an unfiltered tongue to those who carry real burdens, as though whispering directly to a soul full of small-town longing, failed dreams, and unpolished hope. “Gravel Roads of Yesterday” is that kind of song—the sort that doesn’t ask for your attention, it earns it.
What struck me most was the second verse:
*”Old Ford on the highway, got a crack in the glass,
I’m chasing my future, still haunted by the past,
There’s a woman in Texas, with a heart I let slip,
Now the lonely and the whiskey have loosened my grip.”*
As those words settled over the café, some folks carried on playing cards or drinking their pintjes, but I slipped into a memory of my own. In 1978, I’d spent half a year in Rotterdam, hitching back to Helmond on weekends, my mind full of doubts and ambitions. I drove an old Opel Kadett, paint flaking and the rear-view mirror held on by duct tape. I was young and stubborn, dreaming of playing the big stages, but always coming back to the warm, forgiving arms of Helmond. Like Lee’s narrator in the song, I lived with a restlessness, jumping fences and making deals, some better than others.
Songs like “Gravel Roads of Yesterday” don’t resolve anything—they don’t offer redemption or tie the story up with a pretty bow. Instead, they bring you solace in shared experience, recognizing that we’re all trudging down gravel roads, shoes caked in dust, hoping for a little clarity around the next bend. This was the lesson I learned that autumn. The song kept returning to me, and soon, I was covering it at the end of my gigs around Brabant, always introducing it as “a song for the ones who swerved off the pavement, but kept rolling on.”
My small circle of Helmond country fans grew to love it. They’d gather at the back of the bar, boots tapping in the sawdust, and sing along to the final, bruised chorus:
*”So raise up a bottle to the sun’s dying light,
For gravel road walkers chasing the night,
Tomorrow ain’t certain, but I’ll walk anyway…
On the gravel roads of yesterday.”*
That chorus, simple as it is, always felt like a salute to the lost and found souls. Whenever the last lines faded, I’d see old Piet from Rijpelberg staring into his Genever, or Elsje from ’t Kasteel dab away a tear. The power of country—real country—is in its inclusiveness, its open arms for the weary-hearted. Lee Clayton’s writing doesn’t wallow in misery. Instead, it gives strength by naming what hurts and then walking forward with it.
Sometimes, when I listen back to recordings from those early Helmond shows, I’m struck by how “Gravel Roads of Yesterday” caught a little of our Brabant loneliness, our pride in sticking together despite setbacks. The peculiar ache of remembering a place you’ve left behind, or a person whose absence becomes a presence—that’s what Lee captured, and that’s why the song remains special to me even after all the years. It isn’t polished or perfect. There’s no wild solo, no stadium anthem—just a voice, a guitar, and the hush that falls when someone sings your truth.
To this day, young Dutch country hopefuls will ask me why I always return to this obscure tune. Why not only sing the hits, the ones guaranteed to fill the room? And I tell them: music is a conversation, not a declaration. The rare songs—overlooked, never hitting number one—are often the ones still standing decades later. They travel quietly from heart to heart, like gravel roads cutting through the backcountry, leading to places maps forgot to mark.
So, to anyone wandering between yesterday and tomorrow, I say: find your “Gravel Roads of Yesterday.” Let it remind you that being a little lost is a fine way to remember where you came from, and who you’re still becoming. And if you catch me playing it at a café in Helmond some night—raise your glass, sing along, and walk with me a while longer down that dusty memory lane.
Yours in country and kinship,
Kroes den Bock