West Virginia’s state motto, per Our Dumb World: “Country Roads, Take Me Anywhere Else”
Life is old there - on land. Life started appearing on land around 450 million years ago, which means that when the Blue Ridge mountains rose, there was no life anywhere near them.
Anyway, I like “Annie’s Song”.
Yes! Good point.
Life post-dating the Cretaceous-Paleogene event is old there, as old as deciduous trees, which first appeared in the Cretaceous period 90 million years ago
Younger than the mountains, blowin’ like the snow
Just had to swap out ‘breeze’ to fix the rhyme. Songwriting is easy!
Hmmm…ok, you have a point there…
I prefer the New Jersey version:
Concrete road, take me home
To the place I belong
Jersey City, Bayonne mama
Take me home, concrete road
I’d forgotten about that one. 
I was told they picked “West Virginia” for the meter. And that they started with some other state.
You all rob me of some illusions, that Denver himself wrote the song and was a proud West Virginian.
To be fair, you presciently asked for someone to open a thread like this one:
What exit?
I like Calypso. At least he wrote that one.
“Rodinia began to split there” sort-of matches the meter, if you change the notes, change to triplets or something.
Plus 1.
I was gonna say Annies Song.
He was born in Roswell, NM. ( Que Twilight Zone theme)
Makes sense, the only biographical fact I’ve always known about him was that his real name was Deutschendorf, so he was an alien. A German alien in NM.
Just curious, EinsteinsHund, you say Country and folk never have been very popular genres in Germany, but Wikipedia says that 32% of Germany is forested, and Germany has its own very impressive mountain ranges. Are there any popular German songs extolling the beauty of Germany’s own forests and mountains?
One of the versions sung in Whisper of the Heart is Concrete Roads. As a parody about the loss of the countryside to urbanization, which many from New Jersey would appreciate.
Well sure, but German Volksmusik<>American (or British) folk music. I could go on a long explanation, but I’ll sum it up as short as I can: German folk music has had a long, multi-faceted tradition in the many different regions of Germany and probably had its peak in the Romantic era, but got hijacked by nationalists in the late 19th century and totally ruined later by the nazis. What emerged after the War as what now is usually called “Volksmusik” is total trash inspired by cheap Schlager and pop music. “Real” German folk musicians who work in the old traditions (not spoiled by nationalism) make it a point to call that schlagerized music “volkstümliche Musik” instead of “Volksmusik” to differentiate it from the real thing.
To sum it up: like everything having to do with “Volk”, German folk music has been shat over and spoiled by the nazis, so we’re still struggling to acknowledge and renew our folk traditions.
Really interesting historical perspective, thanks!
Not knowing much German, I ran both “volkstümliche Musik” and “Volksmusik” through Google Translate, and both terms translate as “folk music”. Not much help, Google Translate!
So I ran just “stümliche” and it translates to “stupid”. So “volkstümliche Musik” apparently means “stupid folk music” 
No, “stümlich” is not a word in German, I think it was a confusion with “dümmlich”, which means stupid. Literally, “volkstümliche Musik” and “Volksmusik” mean exactly the same, right, but think of “volkstümliche Musik” more as “folkish music” or “in the vein of folk music”., expressing that it’s not exactly the genuine thing.
Oh, ok. I tried doing an English to German translation of ‘stupid’ and and it came back with just ‘dumm’ for German. So, at least when it comes to German translations, it seems Google Translate is dumm, or more accurately, dümmlich 