Chicken Soup for the Soul: Country Music: The Inspirational Stories behind 101 of Your Favorite Country Songs

by Jack Canfield

  When that started rolling, I remember just writing the lyrics and not having any melodic thing going on at all. I remember thinking, “This is interesting. Let’s just follow this down the rabbit hole for a while.”

  For Tom to come up with anything with any up-tempo groove is not normal for him. He’ll tell you that. He’s very much a slow, ballad kind of guy, but he really wanted to write something that rocked. And I wanted to write something that had more meat on the bones lyrically, so it was a great combination of what we wanted to do.

  At first, I had no idea what the song would sound like, but phonetically how the words were falling created a natural groove in my head. Then we got to the chorus and, personally, I always wanted to use the word “Apalachicola” in a song. I’m such a word hound; I love words and their power and their shape and their sound. To me, Apalachicola just sounds good and it’s so rhythmic.

  I don’t want to get too songwriter-y, and get a focus group in here to decide what people we should really target in the song, but we wanted a really good cross-section, at least in terms of our own understanding, of great people from the South, and from different walks of life: stock car drivers, guitar players, novelists, social heroes like Rosa Parks, and spiritual figures like Billy Graham. I was envisioning the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, and seeing all these faces, and trying to decide which of these faces we wanted to use, and which ones hadn’t been used.

  Probably the first listen-through of the song, casual listeners are just hearing the groove, and like the way it sounds or, if they’re a big Tim McGraw fan, they might not hear those references. But by the second or third listen, they are delving into the lyrics a little more. That’s what makes a song a hit. The more you listen to it, the more you get out of it.

  For me, coming from Ohio, but living more of my life in the South than I did in the North, I took in everything that was Southern over the past thirty years. All these things just came out in the song. Finally, what we decided on musically was pretty much straightforward — three-chord rock and roll and the melody was pretty simple and easy to remember.

  When we took it to Tim, he immediately put it on hold, so it had a very arduous trek to the radio from that point. Tom saw Tim and Faith at a restaurant right after that and Tim said, “I loved your song and it’s going to be the name of the album and the name of the tour,” and we were just blown away.

  He did actually cut it right after that, but then somebody at his label decided they were going to put out a Tim McGraw Greatest Hits album first, so that delayed Southern Voice by at least a year and a half. And during that time, he continued to find new songs and record them, so we were concerned that he would become too familiar with it or burn out on it, or maybe he would decide to take the album in a different direction, but he didn’t. He put out the Southern Voice album about a year and a half later, but he put out another song as a single first. So it was a little over two years from the time the song was recorded until the time it actually was heard on the radio, but by February of 2010, it had hit #1.

  The song is a nod to Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. One of the high points of my career was seeing Tim perform that song on The Jay Leno Show with Greg Allman. Greg, to me, is one of the greatest guitar players that ever drew a breath, and that’s why I mentioned the Allman Brothers in that song. To hear him sing that song on the show was pretty mind-blowing.

  Southern Voice

  Hank Williams sang it, Number 3 drove it

  Chuck Berry twanged it, Will Faulkner wrote it

  Aretha Franklin sold it, Dolly Parton graced it

  Rosa Parks rode it, Scarlett O chased it

  CHORUS:

  Smooth as the hickory wind

  That blows from Memphis

  Down to Apalachicola

  It’s “Hi y’all. Did ya eat well?

  Come on in. I’m sure glad to know ya”

  Don’t let this old gold cross

  And this Allman Brothers t-shirt throw ya

  It’s cicadas making noise

  With a southern voice

  Hank Aaron smacked it, Michael Jordan dunked it

  Pocahontas tracked it, Jack Daniels drunk it

  Tom Petty rocked it, Dr. King paved it

  Bear Bryant won it, Billy Graham saved it

  CHORUS

  Don’t let this old gold cross

  And this Crimson Tide t-shirt throw ya

  It’s cicadas making noise

  With a southern voice

  Jesus is my friend. America is my home

  Sweet iced tea and Jerry Lee

  Daytona Beach, that’s what gets to me

  I can feel it in my bones.

  Smooth as the hickory wind

  That blows from Memphis

  Down to Apalachicola

  It’s “Hi y’all. Did ya eat well?

  Come on in child. I’m sure glad to know ya.”

  Don’t let this old gold cross

  And this Charlie Daniels t-shirt throw ya

  We’re just boys making noise

  With a southern voice

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

  Southern voice

  I got a southern voice

  A southern voice

  To purchase the original demo of this song,

  go to www.countrysongdemos.com

  Strawberry Wine

  Story by Matraca Berg

  Song written by Matraca Berg and Gary Harrison

  Recorded by Deana Carter

  This song came from spending summers at my grandpa’s farm in Wisconsin. I have an aunt that is close to my age in Wisconsin and we used to hang out together. That’s where I met this fellow. I didn’t actually meet him on my grandma’s farm, but it sounded good in the song.

  This is a song about first love. There is something about the summertime and being away from home in a completely foreign environment, which it was. It was very rural there. There is something so innocent about the way people pass their time there. There was a place called the Gravel Pit where all the kids used to hang out because there were no movie theaters. There was nothing to do. We used to sneak out through the cornfields to get to his car if we wanted to go out, and then we would go to the Gravel Pit.

  Everything else in the song was completely true. We actually drank Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine. It was awful. The farm was sold as my grandparents got older. Their kids didn’t really want to farm. It’s just too hard to make a living farming these days.

  It was really sad because I felt like I couldn’t go back there and revisit any of those memories. That was what the song was about. There is an innocence lost when you are a young girl and fall in love for the first time, but there is also an innocence lost about a way of life that will never be again, at least in our family. Everybody went off to college and that was that. I think I was longing for that farm and those times as much as I was lost love.

  When the song became a hit, it was a pretty big deal in Luck, Wisconsin, to have a hit song about the area. My aunt still lives there, but she is a nurse, not a farmer. She actually built a house on some of my grandfather’s hunting property. The boy moved away, but I think his parents still live there.

  My publishing company had a little guitar pull and invited record labels and producers and artists to come and listen to our new songs. There were Kim Carnes, Jim Photoglo, Tim Mensy, and me and some other writers. We set up a tent and Deana Carter was the only artist who showed up, so she heard the song first. She had already made her first record and kept this song in the back of her mind. It made the rounds to several other female artists and they all passed, including Trisha Yearwood and Pam Tillis. It just wasn’t right for them, so it was still waiting for her when it came time to do her second album. It was CMA Song of the Year in 1997 and nominated for a Grammy.

  Strawberry Wine

  He was working through college on my grandpa’s farm.

  I was thirsting for knowledge and he had a car.

>   I was caught somewhere between a woman and a child.

  One restless summer we found love growin’ wild.

  On the banks of the river on a well-beaten path.

  It’s funny how those memories they last.

  Like strawberry wine, seventeen.

  The hot July moon saw everything.

  My first taste of love, oh bittersweet.

  Green on the vine.

  Like strawberry wine.

  I still remember when thirty was old.

  And my biggest fear was September when he had to go.

  A few cards and letters and one long distance call.

  We drifted away like the leaves in the fall.

  But year after year I come back to this place.

  Just to remember the taste.

  Of strawberry wine, seventeen.

  The hot July moon saw everything.

  My first taste of love oh bittersweet.

  Green on the vine.

  Like strawberry wine.

  The fields have grown over now.

  Years since they’ve seen the plow.

  There’s nothing time hasn’t touched.

  Is it really him or the loss of my innocence

  I’ve been missing so much?

  Yeah. . .

  Like strawberry wine and seventeen.

  The hot July moon saw everything.

  My first taste of love oh bittersweet.

  Green on the vine.

  Like strawberry wine.

  That’s Just About Right

  Story by Jeff Black

  Song written by Jeff Black

  Recorded by Blackhawk

  I had a lot of wonderful musicians who took me under their wing when I first came to town, people like bassist Dave Pomeroy and bluegrass legend Sam Bush. After I had been here a while, I made some demo recordings for my publisher in town. I was really proud of the session. They were acoustic-based and I felt like they were a great collection of songs. In my mind, they were a true expression of the art I was trying to create.

  I sat down and started playing these for the publisher and he listened to the first song for about a minute, then hit the stop button, and shook his head. Then he played the second song for about a minute or minute and a half, and he did the same thing. He listened to the third song and did the same thing, hitting the stop play button. After that, he sat back and lit a cigarette and he said, “Black, you know what your trouble is? You’re thinking too much.”

  That’s when I knew I was on the right track. At the same time, I didn’t know whether I should trash the office or just lie down on the floor. I had just picked up everything and left everything I loved, my home and my family, and all that I knew was true. I couldn’t help but wonder, “What have I done?”

  I was beside myself. I didn’t own a piano at the time and really couldn’t play one very well, but I went upstairs to this little writing room there at the publisher where they had this tiny piano, and I started playing some chords. I liked the way it sounded and “That’s Just About Right” fell out of the sky. I wrote that song down as fast as I could, as fast as it would come out of my pen. I really never changed much about the draft. I wrote that song in about fifteen or twenty minutes.

  I’ve always been very Zen about my songwriting and almost always write by myself. I’ve always looked at my songwriting as a journal of sorts. I was wondering what I was doing and what to make of this whole meeting of art and commerce, and all of the sudden, I couldn’t write it down fast enough.

  The song is a composite of several different influences. I have a friend who had gone to the art institute in Kansas City and he had moved to Chicago and was working on being an illustrator. He and I have had several long conversations about art and commerce and how you find yourself in the midst of it. You may feel as though you’re on your path and then all of a sudden you’re blindsided by the real world and responsibility. As a creative person, it’s never really good to get your head out of the clouds, but sometimes it’s good to get yourself a little closer to the ground every once in a while to check your balance in an attempt to center yourself on a planet that’s flying around the sun at 65,000 miles an hour. I believe all the questions start sounding like answers more and more as the days go by and, hopefully, we gain some perspective. It’s simply how we look at things and trying to remember that is the hardest part.

  Part of the struggle is that all of us in our day-to-day are pushed to stare at a white empty canvas, no matter what you do for a living, and it can be terrifying. It’s such a short time that we spend on this planet, and happiness is what we’re all after. When it gets down to it, there’s nothing completely original. Everything’s been done, so the only thing that really matters, the only original thing left, is our individual point of view. That is what the song is about: being comfortable with your point of view. Feeling comfortable in your own skin. I tell this story a lot when I play the song live. Whether your creative medium of choice is pastel, or watercolor, or songs or stories or whether you draw funny little pictures while you’re talking on the telephone, it’s finding a comfort in that. A comfort in knowing that you belong.

  We live in a society that tries to put the “thumbs-down” on people and that process is designed to make people doubt themselves and think “I could never sing,” or “I could never write a poem or write a story” or “I could never paint a picture.” That’s ridiculous. Of course you can. We all have something to say. We all have an original point of view. It’s natural for us to be creative. And we can’t be attached to the outcome and constantly comparing ourselves with other people. It’s not about perfection. It’s just about expressing yourself.

  That’s Just About Right

  My old friend lives up in the mountains

  He flew up there to paint the world

  He says, “Even though interpretation’s what I count on

  This little picture to me seems blurred

  Hard lines and the shadows come easy

  I see it all just as clear as a bell

  I just can’t seem to set my easel to please me

  I paint my Heaven but it looks like hell”

  CHORUS:

  Your blue might be gray, your less might be more

  Your window to the world might be your own front door

  Your shiniest day might come in the middle of the night

  That’s just about right

  He says, “Man I ain’t comin’ down until my picture is perfect

  And all the wonder is gone from my eyes

  Down through my hands and on to the canvas

  Still like my vision, but still a surprise”

  “Real life,” he says, “is the hardest impression

  It’s always movin’ so I let it come through

  And that, my friend, I say, is the glory of true independence

  Just to do what you do what you do what you do”

  CHORUS

  My old friend came down from the mountain

  Without even lookin’ he found a little truth

  You can go through life with the greatest intentions

  But you do what you do what you just gotta do

  CHORUS

  That’s My Job

  Story by Gary Burr

  Song written by Gary Burr

  Recorded by Conway Twitty

  Every word in this song was based on my life, except the title. That came from the Muse, but everything else in there was based on my life and my relationship with my father.

  My dad passed away in 1986 and a few days after that I went down to my basement, where I used to go and write songs. I was living in Connecticut at the time, and I picked up my guitar and started singing the song and writing it as I went, and I pretty much sang it out just the way it was recorded. I’ve never had that happen before.

  The description of the house in the song, with the mirror at the end of the hall, is the house I grew up in. As a little boy, I would have these bad dreams that my parents had
died, and I would go in their room and they would calm me down and let me get into their bed and sleep with them.

  When I was in college, I had a chance to move to California to be in a band, so I decided to drop out of school to move to California. My parents obviously didn’t want me to go. They thought I was making a huge mistake. My mom and dad sat me down and told me all the reasons why I shouldn’t go, and tried to talk me out of it. They were just fit to be tied. I listened to them, and then I told them that this is what I was going to do. I had made up my mind. I was going out west. Then they looked at me and said, “How can we help?” They bought me two amplifiers, so when we got to California we could have something to play into. All the guys in the band had sold our equipment to get the money to go to California.

  As for the song, there are some serious grammatical errors in it, but I never went back to rewrite it. The reason I never rewrote it is because I never thought anyone would record it. I thought it was too personal. And it was too long. It had a very non-country structure. But I turned it in because that’s what I was supposed to do — to play it for the people who were publishing me. I had no expectations, though. A couple of guys and I had formed a publishing company and they were in New York at the time, but they had some outlets in Nashville, so they sent it down there.

  I always heard that Conway Twitty was the guy to pitch to. Everyone I knew always said that Conway would really listen to a song that had a strong lyric and that he would cut it regardless of whether it was commercial or not. If he liked it, he would do it. So they pitched it to him on a whim. I think he was the first person we pitched it to. And boom, it was on the radio and my boyhood home was being described in a song on country radio stations all around the country.

  I got married pretty young. When my dad passed away, I was already a dad myself. But when your father goes, then you’re the “man.” It really puts things into perspective. It certainly made me think of a time in the future when my kids would be going through this. And I want them to be able to say the same things and to have the same feelings about me that I had about my dad.