@Einsteinshund did say ‘ish’ so yes, I did not need to add my own speculation as to the German suffix.
I thought the Permian-Triassic mass extinction was the biggest.
Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert were a folk duo. They wrote a lot of Country Roads. John Denver came by and loved the song. He helped them finish it and recorded it.
John included Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert on his tours just to sing their parts in Country Roads. Later John featured them on his label as The Starland Vocal band.
I think it’s the perfect story telling song. Every country has a rural countryside and they can strongly identify with Country Roads.
Yes. Good cite.
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And the road is Clopper Road/MD117 in Maryland. I drive along that road a lot and it’s still very rural, and a great motorcycling road.
This is mentioned in Interior Chinatown, the book and the TV series, both excellent, as an anthem for immigrants. It’s less obvious what’s happening in the TV show, so the book sheds some light on it.
I’ll let author Charles Yu do the talking.
Maybe it’s the dream of the open highway. The romantic myth of the West. A reminder that these funny little Orientals have actually been Americans longer than you have. Know something about this country that you haven’t yet figured out. If you don’t believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying “Country Roads,” try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to “West Virginia, mountain mama,” you’re going to be singing along, and by the time he’s done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who’s been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.
OK, I’ve never encountered any music that labeled itself as “Americana”, but that list of ingredients looks good to me. I was afraid, when I saw the name, that it’d be faux-patriotic garbage like “God Bless the USA”.
I first heard the name “Americana music” in 2003 when the Chicks (a.k.a. The Dixie Chicks) decided that, since some country music fans and radio stations didn’t like the political statements they made, it would be better to bill themselves as singers of Americana music.
IOW …
New! Improved! Country/Western music with less Hate and Bigotry! Americana FTW.
Interesting, that’s right by my sister in law’s house. I’m pretty sure I’ve driven on that road, but unfortunately in a rental minivan, not on my motorcycle.
It was a big hit with the crowd when I heard it sung in a pub in Dublin on a New Year’s Eve several years ago.
Heh, I came into reference this. There’s a strip, when Duke was ambassador to China, where a military band does a John Denver standard and Duke says, ‘take me now, Lord.’ (although I think that might have been Rocky mtn High).
East German communists knew it.
Quite a while ago, when Berlin was still a divided city, I was sitting on the bank of a canal at the far southern edge of the free side. The canal was the border, and on the opposite bank was the wall. Beyond the wall were some low buildings. I could never tell what they were, but I thought it might be some sort of factory complex or processing plant, as sometimes during my walks along the canal I’d hear noises from over there that suggested that. This day was a quiet sunny Sunday morning in Springtime. As I sat listening to the birds, I heard, highly amplified from the other side of the wall, the opening twangs of “County Roads”. It kept going, sounding a little off from the original and sung in English with a German accent, but not too bad. The song went all the way through. Then it was back to just the twittering birds. I sat there a while longer, wondering if there’d be another song or some other sort of commotion. But nothing.
The blue water reference had me puzzled for years. Until I looked at a map. West Virginia is landlocked.
This verse is so well crafted. It evokes memories that most people feel strongly.