The Story Behind the Song: "Old Gabriel"
- Kinnfolk
- Aug 1
- 3 min read
“Old Gabriel,” the fourth track off Star Above the Mountain, is our ode to Roanoke’s railroad history. It was also the most difficult song on the album to write.
Research included a trip to the O. Winston Link Museum, countless dives into the archives of the Roanoke Times, and conversations with folks about their own connection to the railroad—whether as conductors, lawyers, or as children and grandchildren of the people who built the famous Class J steam locomotives.
The song’s title, “Old Gabriel,” refers to a three-pronged work whistle that kept time for the East End Shops. Many people in Roanoke—ourselves included—still remember the sound of this whistle, which began shrilling in 1883 and ended sometime in the summer of 2020. It was an all-encompassing sound that shook the air around you for 13 seconds multiple times a day, audible to anybody within 5-10 miles of downtown (depending on the weather).
As we researched for this song, we realized something strange: nobody knew the exact day in 2020 when Old Gabriel sounded for the last time.
This confounded me at first. A sound that loud and that regular, one that’s been part of Roanoke’s cityscape for more than 100 years…and NOBODY noticed when it stopped? But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. It’s easy to notice when something loud appears suddenly, but harder to note that it’s missing. Some people I talked to described a vague sense of absence that took them a couple of weeks to identify—and by the time they’d realized what was missing, it was too late to know when the whistle had disappeared. Too late to hear that familiar sound one last time.
In fact, a few people didn’t realize that the whistle had stopped until we talked about it at our album release party in February 2025!
And so “Old Gabriel” became a song not only about Roanoke’s railroad history, but also about the things we lose when we’re not paying attention. Listen all the way to the end of the track—you'll hear our interpretation of the whistle!
The Blast of the Past
A LOT of research went into writing "Old Gabriel." We explored museums, conducted interviews, and delved into newspaper archives…but we want to highlight one particular resource that was invaluable to this project.
“The Blast of the Past” was a Roanoke Times article written by Beth Macy in February of 1996. It’s a stunning piece of reporting that explores Roanoke's beloved work whistle, Old Gabriel, from every angle imaginable. Macy interviewed people who operated the whistle, residents who lived within earshot, musicians, history buffs, railroad workers and their children—assembling anything you could want to know about the whistle.
“One of the city’s oldest icons, it is to the ear what the Mill Mountain Star is to the eye - a part of our community consciousness and a symbol of our past,” Macy writes.
Some details of our song, such as Old Gabriel being audible 10 miles away or the image of the whistle “fading soft into the morn,” are direct references to Macy’s reporting.
In one of the article's coolest moments, a gaggle of Fret Mill employees runs outside during the whistle’s 13-second call and identify what notes are playing. Macy recorded the answer—an inverted D-major seventh chord that slides down to an A-major chord at the end—in her article. The whistle was still sounding in 1996 when the Roanoke Times published this article, but it had fallen silent by the time we read the article in 2023. Thanks to Macy’s creative reporting, we’re able recreate Old Gabriel at the end of every live performance!
Macy concludes her article with the question: “When the whistle does fall silent, will anyone be around who remembers it as a symbol of Roanoke’s working-class roots?”
Sadly, in 2025—29 years after the article’s publication—we have the answer. The more we perform this song, the more we realize that people either didn’t notice when the whistle stopped or moved to Roanoke after 2020, meaning they never heard it at all. Our hope is that our song, “Old Gabriel,” can be like this Beth Macy article—a moment of witnessing, so that the things we value aren’t completely lost in time.
Do YOU have a connection to the railroad in Southwest Virginia? Please leave a comment below. We’d love to hear your story!
Stay tuned for more entries in the "Behind the Song" series...
Purchase "Star Above the Mountain"
That's all for now!
~Josh & Julie
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