My son Jesus Mateo and I just got back from a four day holiday in Melgar, Tolima – jungle country, a four hour trip from where we live in Bogotá, Colombia. I’ve sent a video below of a ride we enjoyed at a park called Piscilago. Just a week earlier, my daughter Katherine Rose and I had also experienced this ride, which I presented here.
These trips lead us neatly into today’s featured track Take Me Home, Country Roads – one of the most nostalgic songs I have heard about childhood and nature. It’s one of the first songs I can recall hearing, and it remains dear to my heart – just as I imagine it does for many of you reading this. It also conjures memories of seeing the 70’s show The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams and its theme song Maybe.
[Verse 1]
Almost Heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze
[Chorus]
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mama
Take me home, country roads
[Verse 2]
All my memories gather ’round her
Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye
[Chorus]
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mama
Take me home, country roads
[Bridge]
I hear her voice in the morning hour, she calls me
The radio reminds me of my home far away
Driving down the road, I get a feeling
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday
Most of the following was extracted from the Wikipedia reference below:
Take Me Home, Country Roads may well be one of the most popular songs revisited over the years on contemporary music radio stations. It was written by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert and John Denver and released as a single on April 12, 1971, peaking at number two on the Billboard charts. It is of course one of John Denver’s most popular songs and has continued to sell, with over 1.8 million digital copies sold in the United States alone. In 1998, the 1971 recording by John Denver was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and considered a symbol of West Virginia.
Inspiration for the title line had come while Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff, who were married, were driving along Clopper Road in Montgomery County, Maryland, to a gathering of Nivert’s family in Gaithersburg, with Nivert behind the wheel while Danoff played his guitar. “I just started thinking, country roads, I started thinking of me growing up in western New England and going on all these small roads“, Danoff said. “It didn’t have anything to do with Maryland or anyplace.”
To Danoff, the lyric “[t]he radio reminds me of my home far away” in the bridge is quintessentially West Virginian, an allusion to when he listened to the program Saturday Night Jamboree, broadcast from Wheeling, West Virginia, on WWVA at his home in Springfield, Massachusetts, during his childhood in the 1950s.
Danoff and Nivert ran through what they had of the song they had been working on for about a month, planning to sell to Johnny Cash. Denver decided he had to have it when he returned with the couple to their apartment for an impromptu jam (after a post Christmas reopening night at The Cellar Door in Washington, D.C) which prompted them to abandon plans for the sale. The verses and chorus were still missing a bridge, so the three of them went about finishing…When they finished, on the morning of Wednesday, December 30, 1970, Denver announced that the song had to go on his next album.
References:
1. Take Me Home, Country Roads – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
Great to see you having a ton of fun with your son! You’re also a courageous man filming during that ride!
John Denver sometimes gets a mixed reception. I’ve said it before and I’m happy to repeat it, I’ve always liked the man, including “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” It also reminds me of my teenage years when I learned how to play that song on the acoustic guitar. Haven’t played it in a while, but I think I still remember the chords…
Thanks Christian. Almost everyone (like sane people) when they film on the rides carry their mobiles in a sealed waterproof transparent case, but I didn’t procure one. I filmed this just once with the mobile exposed on this fairly gentle ride. Sometimes you gotta live dangerously anyhows.
I wrote in a previous John Denver article about his lovely ballad ‘For You’ that he had left a bad taste in many people’s mouths because of his alleged alcoholism and other such things in his short-term marriage to Australian Cassandra Delaney. I listened to a lot of his music in my youth, but it hasn’t carried over into my adulthood despite my adoration of this song.
Love the song, and what a treat to see your son having fun and hear the joy in your laughter!
Oh that’s lovely of you to say. That obscure laugh came to me spontaneously (ie I don’t laugh like that), but upon relisten it strangely sounds like Joaquin Phoenix’s ‘Joker’ laugh.
I just giggle together with you in the video.🤭 that was truly fun! I love your laugh, Matt. Holy …….. i just subscribe. See you on youtube🤭
It’s funny the timing since I just sent this video to my kids again. I don’t know how that laugh came into being. But it’s a great record of the fun we shared and also to have it with this song is such a treat. Your comment made me so happy!
You deserved to be happy, Matt. I’ll do my best to give back the kindness each of my followers gave to me. I’m sorry if I’m late sometimes for your updates.
No problems. When I read your posts it’s like a blanket of tranquillity which envelops me. I always look forward to it
Aw, you’re so kind and supportive saying that, Matt. I’m so glad it gives you tranquillity. I pray I always publish events that give joy and positivity. Sending love, Matt.