WE’VE BEEN SINGING ROCK SALT AND NAILS ALL WRONG
So story goes, Utah Phillips wrote it about his ex and sang it only once to his friend Rosalie Sorrels whilst drunk. Utah said the song was too depressing and he never played it again. Rosalie said she remembered every word also claimed she had a tape recorder going (but that tape hasn’t surfaced that I can find but if someone does I’d love to hear it). But she would go on to later professionally record it herself. So we can effectively credit her as a co-writer as Utah has abandoned it and never wrote it down or recorded it.
Now here’s the thing about her recording (at least this one below). Clearly in her last verse she uses “YOUR”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zT1VKAdvaeM&si=lV9emL7xUmqVpE6e
"Now if YOUR ladies were blackbirds, if YOUR ladies were thrushes
Well, I'd lie there for hours in the chilly cold marshes
And if YOUR ladies were squirrels with them high bushy tails
Well, I'd load up my shotgun with rock salt and nails
I'd load up my shotgun”
This implies anger at the aforementioned ex’s lovers we can presume he cheated on the narrator with, assuming a hetero relationship from a woman’s POV.
Now when the song starts to get picked up and covered (Exclusively by men) by bluegrass and country artists they start to change it to “YOU” or “THE”
"Now if THE ladies were blackbirds,”
"if YOU ladies were thrushes”
So, this word takes it to hating women as a whole from hating or having envy towards a select few. Either way changing it to “YOUR” quite affects the meaning of the song and brings it back to the conflict the narrator foreshadows in the first verse with the line
“With the lies that YOU told”
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
EDIT: turns out “the ladies/ blackbirds & thrushes” is an old Irish and English folk song trope that would have been known to Utah and Rosalie. So my crack theory is just that. But hey that’s the fun part about art and interpretation!