Take Me Home, Country Roads

Soul Music

BBC

Personal Journals, Music Commentary, Society & Culture, Music

4.7 • 772 Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

"Country roads, take me home To the place I belong"

'Take Me Home, Country Roads' was written by Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert with and for their friend John Denver.

The song went on to be covered by Ray Charles, Toots and the Maytals, Olivia Newton John and many more.

A song about the longing for home and the desire to be back with the people you love, 'Country Roads' has become one of the official state songs of West Virginia but it also speaks to people from around the world and across political divides.

It's a song about togetherness, belonging, homesickness, the immigrant experience and the hold that the landscape of your 'home place' can have on you.

Featuring contributions from:

Bill Danoff Sarah Morris Jason Jeong Ngozi Fulan Lloyd Bradley Alison Wells.

And from Molly Sarlé, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Meath of the band Mountain Man.

Produced for BBA Audio in Bristol by Mair Bosworth.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2021.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Traitors is back and so is that mysterious cloaked figure with the familiar fringe.
0:06.7	Yeah, it's me.
0:07.9	And when you've watched Claudia in the castle, join me, Ed Gamble, for the official visualised companion podcast.
0:13.7	And remember, I'll be listening.
0:15.9	Okay?
0:16.7	No, seriously, I love it.
0:18.5	What a faithful.
0:19.7	We'll unpack betrayals and spill scandalous secrets
0:22.3	with celeb guests, traitors' legends,
0:25.0	and murdered and banished players.
0:27.1	The Traitors Uncloat.
0:28.4	Watch on EyePlayer, listen for more on BBC Sounds.
0:33.1	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:45.3	Music. BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Country Roads is a song about homecoming.
0:54.0	It calls to a sense of home and captures it in a way that's almost primal and that's resonant for people whether they're from West Virginia or not.
1:07.0	These country roads take me home to the place. or not.
1:24.1	The notion of getting to go back to a place where you belong, I think everyone wants to reach for that.
1:27.4	Even if that's not necessarily a reality, the idea of having a place where you feel comfortable or where you feel like you belong, particularly the place where you grew up.
1:37.2	For me, like the minute I get around the trees of Massachusetts, I feel more at ease.
1:43.0	The minute I see like crabgrass and sand of Cape Cod or anything like that, I feel instantly more at ease.
1:56.0	It's such a lovely image to think of traveling on your roads to go home to the people that you love and the people that you know.
2:24.3	I think I've written over 100 songs before we got to country roads. I just sat around and wrote songs all day.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.