The song is written in the style of a southern chain-gang gospel chanty. This song is based on Red's experience as a young man planting trees in South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. The hoedag is a tool similar to an adze, actually shaped and weighted like a railroad pick that has only the cutting blade and not the spike blade. The person planting trees loads up the human version of saddlebags full of saplings on a waist belt and heads out onto the plantation. To plant a tree, you take a step while swinging the hoedag, sink the blade into the earth, pull it back to open the hole, drop the sapling into the hole, step forward to close the hole with a boot heel, then step on into the next swing. If the terrain permits, this movement establishes a hypnotic rhythmic groove. The song tries to convey that groove.
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