Story Behind The Song: Old Town Road
Posted on February 7, 2010 with 1 comment
Old Town Road is sort of a conglomeration of a bunch of memories I had as a kid. The idea for the song, as is in many cases with my writing, came out of the basic chord progression and groove. Many times I will sit down, play a groove, and get a feel of what the song should be about and let the feel of the groove just take me somewhere. This is one of my favorite parts of writing… totally free forming.
In this case I was whisked back to my childhood days growing up in Mount Pleasant, WI… a suburb of Racine, which was about 25 miles south of Milwaukee, WI. I was taken back to my old friends, neighborhood games we’d play and bits and pieces of my growing up to a ripe old age of 10 when we had moved away from that area. Later as an adult we would travel back to the Racine area from Michigan to visit family, and would always drive by the old place. I remember once we stopped in to the man that bought our house and we got a grand tour after not having lived in it for ten years… that was kind of strange for me. Things in the yard grew up, the area aged and I noticed how much smaller the house seemed to me both inside and outside as an adult.
There were changes in the neighborhood… new houses all around where there use to be fields, the road we lived on was aged and patched and just not the same, and yet as I looked at it, it was virtually the very same road I rode bike on and played as a kid. I recall as a young boy sitting along the edge of the road, traffic was pretty non-existent then, and I remember one hot summer sitting along the road popping the little bubbles in the liquid asphalt patching material that would rise up in the summer sun, the same asphalt I’d ride my bike on in the 60’s with playing cards strapped to the frame by clothes pins as they flapped away like a motorcycle as I drove down the street.
Thinking back at these days I began to wonder if I liked the new changes that happened in the neighborhood and yet did I really like the aged look of the old stomping grounds as it got older and somewhat neglected? For points of interest I did have a best friend that lived about a couple blocks down, his name wasn’t Danny Carson however, it was Eugene Hanson. Through the years I’ve often wondered what became of Eugene as I questioned in the song “I wonder where old Danny is”. I’ve heard from relatives in that area that he is still around and had asked about me too. How time can separate friends… There was no Mrs. Green or apple trees but there was an old bachelor living next to us named Chester that had this huge Willow tree which we’d swing from its weeping branches like Tarzan. As with much of the old neighborhood, he’s gone now but he never cared we used the tree as such. The apple tree notion actually came in from a house we lived in when in Michigan; we had a few in our front yard which I’d eat fruit on while mowing lawn on the riding mower.
The road concept is based off of two roads. Stuart Road and river Road. Two distinctly different roads in two distinctly different states in two distinctly different times of my childhood. I road bike on both and I could remember wiping out on both while riding bike leaving skin from the knee or somewhere on the asphalt.
Neither of the roads ran through town, they were both more rural roads, the first less so than the latter. The bridge of this song talks about how those simple days can whisk you back despite the many travels and places we’ve traveled in life. When it’s all said and done, no matter what happens to the old neighborhood, the childhood friends will perpetually be the age I left them, and the neighborhood will always be a perfect and fun place as long as I can continue to remember it. Everyone has their own road in front of their house, their own Danny Carson, Mrs. Green, skinning knees on bikes and etc., its all part of growing up and then looking back on it as an adult and reliving it in your mind just as you had lived it the first time… perhaps even better.
Here are the lyrics to Old Town Road. You can stream a dirt roads version of the current month's Story Behind The Song at: http://www.braddunsemusic.com/files/sbts.m3u
Old Town Road
Her white lines are faded
Blacktop stone jaded
'Cause you can find her now in the run down part of town
But you know back in her day
She rolled out center stage
Right through town, so clean and so proud
But they built the city to the west
With brand new wider streets
Like a soldier laid to rest
Then let go to the weeds
That's the Old Town Road
Out our drive and to the right
Two blocks down then you would find
Danny Carson's place where we'd sneak our cigarettes
Next to him was Mrs. Green,
With a back yard full of apple trees
She'd run us off but we'd grab all we could get
Mrs. Green passed on late last fall
I wonder where old Danny is
Man our old place is lookin' small
Compared to when I was a kid
On the Old Town Road
There's a lot of memories in the miles I've traveled since
Years replaced those simple days; still I'm taken in…
By the Old Town Road
Now there's been talk here as of late
To rip her out and renovate
And I don't quite know what that means to me
There's somethin' 'bout walkin' 'round
The very place you first fell down and skinned your knee
Without the trainin' wheels
I guess no matter what they do
I can go back in my mind
To a place with a perfect view
Of the innocence of time
On the Old Town Road
The Old Town Road
©2008 Brad Dunse
All Rights Reserved
In this case I was whisked back to my childhood days growing up in Mount Pleasant, WI… a suburb of Racine, which was about 25 miles south of Milwaukee, WI. I was taken back to my old friends, neighborhood games we’d play and bits and pieces of my growing up to a ripe old age of 10 when we had moved away from that area. Later as an adult we would travel back to the Racine area from Michigan to visit family, and would always drive by the old place. I remember once we stopped in to the man that bought our house and we got a grand tour after not having lived in it for ten years… that was kind of strange for me. Things in the yard grew up, the area aged and I noticed how much smaller the house seemed to me both inside and outside as an adult.
There were changes in the neighborhood… new houses all around where there use to be fields, the road we lived on was aged and patched and just not the same, and yet as I looked at it, it was virtually the very same road I rode bike on and played as a kid. I recall as a young boy sitting along the edge of the road, traffic was pretty non-existent then, and I remember one hot summer sitting along the road popping the little bubbles in the liquid asphalt patching material that would rise up in the summer sun, the same asphalt I’d ride my bike on in the 60’s with playing cards strapped to the frame by clothes pins as they flapped away like a motorcycle as I drove down the street.
Thinking back at these days I began to wonder if I liked the new changes that happened in the neighborhood and yet did I really like the aged look of the old stomping grounds as it got older and somewhat neglected? For points of interest I did have a best friend that lived about a couple blocks down, his name wasn’t Danny Carson however, it was Eugene Hanson. Through the years I’ve often wondered what became of Eugene as I questioned in the song “I wonder where old Danny is”. I’ve heard from relatives in that area that he is still around and had asked about me too. How time can separate friends… There was no Mrs. Green or apple trees but there was an old bachelor living next to us named Chester that had this huge Willow tree which we’d swing from its weeping branches like Tarzan. As with much of the old neighborhood, he’s gone now but he never cared we used the tree as such. The apple tree notion actually came in from a house we lived in when in Michigan; we had a few in our front yard which I’d eat fruit on while mowing lawn on the riding mower.
The road concept is based off of two roads. Stuart Road and river Road. Two distinctly different roads in two distinctly different states in two distinctly different times of my childhood. I road bike on both and I could remember wiping out on both while riding bike leaving skin from the knee or somewhere on the asphalt.
Neither of the roads ran through town, they were both more rural roads, the first less so than the latter. The bridge of this song talks about how those simple days can whisk you back despite the many travels and places we’ve traveled in life. When it’s all said and done, no matter what happens to the old neighborhood, the childhood friends will perpetually be the age I left them, and the neighborhood will always be a perfect and fun place as long as I can continue to remember it. Everyone has their own road in front of their house, their own Danny Carson, Mrs. Green, skinning knees on bikes and etc., its all part of growing up and then looking back on it as an adult and reliving it in your mind just as you had lived it the first time… perhaps even better.
Here are the lyrics to Old Town Road. You can stream a dirt roads version of the current month's Story Behind The Song at: http://www.braddunsemusic.com/files/sbts.m3u
Old Town Road
Her white lines are faded
Blacktop stone jaded
'Cause you can find her now in the run down part of town
But you know back in her day
She rolled out center stage
Right through town, so clean and so proud
But they built the city to the west
With brand new wider streets
Like a soldier laid to rest
Then let go to the weeds
That's the Old Town Road
Out our drive and to the right
Two blocks down then you would find
Danny Carson's place where we'd sneak our cigarettes
Next to him was Mrs. Green,
With a back yard full of apple trees
She'd run us off but we'd grab all we could get
Mrs. Green passed on late last fall
I wonder where old Danny is
Man our old place is lookin' small
Compared to when I was a kid
On the Old Town Road
There's a lot of memories in the miles I've traveled since
Years replaced those simple days; still I'm taken in…
By the Old Town Road
Now there's been talk here as of late
To rip her out and renovate
And I don't quite know what that means to me
There's somethin' 'bout walkin' 'round
The very place you first fell down and skinned your knee
Without the trainin' wheels
I guess no matter what they do
I can go back in my mind
To a place with a perfect view
Of the innocence of time
On the Old Town Road
The Old Town Road
©2008 Brad Dunse
All Rights Reserved