"Hickory Wind" is a song written by country rock artist Gram Parsons and former International Submarine Band member Bob Buchanan.
[2] The song was written on a train ride the pair took from Florida to Los Angeles in early 1968, and first appeared on The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo album.
[5] Johnny Rogan, in his book The Byrds: Timeless Flight Revisited, offers the following interpretation for the song: "The alluring 'Hickory Wind' serves as a powerful image for Parsons' bittersweet nostalgia, as he imagines an Edenic childhood of simple pleasures like climbing trees.
What really makes the song, however, is Parsons' aching vocal performance, set against a superb steel guitar backing, whose whining combines with his yearning voice to create a mood of unbearable poignancy.
[12] The Seldom Scene covered "Hickory Wind" on the live album Blue Grass: The Greatest Show On Earth recorded at a concert in 1980 and released in 1986 with members of The Country Gentlemen and J. D. Crowe and the New South.