Take Me Home, Country Roads

One of the best parts of being a recording artist is that I can pay tribute to amazing musicians who have made an impression on me by covering their songs. Nothing beats creating and breathing life into a new idea that expresses a deep part of yourself, but that doesn’t diminish the joy of playing other people’s music, which can often evolve into a deep and personal expression of yourself as well. My goal when looking for a song to cover is to find lyrics that I connect with, and music that I can change so I can make it my own. One such song that fit the bill for me, as it has with so many others, is “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. 

Recharging in the Redwoods during
one of my West Coast road trips. 

Throughout the last decade I have been nomadic almost as much as I’ve been settled. In one year alone I drove the length of West Coast five times. In fact I usually get a sense of relief, a feeling of home even, when I hit the open road. So naturally a song about, driving, the American landscape and the pursuit of home, spoke to me. So one night, in a recording studio in Mesa Arizona, a friend and I decided to “lay it down on tape”, just for fun. 

It’s funny how things work out, because after driving up and down the coast and around the country so many times I had enough footage to put together a decent road-tripping video. And that video was seen by tens of thousands of people, some of whom were in England looking for a cover version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” to feature in a TV commercial. Now, I had no intention on creating a video when I recorded it, or even sharing it really, and I had no intention of selling it when I created the video, but I ended up licensing my recording to the Diabetes Concerts Foundation for use in their 2013 online and TV ad campaign in England, three years after that night of putzing around in Arizona! I think the lesson here is that you can’t know what is going to succeed in art and entertainment, so just do what you are interested in. Those are the projects that have the most appeal, because you like them the best. Or, maybe it’s best to copy formulas, seems to work for the record labels and they are a lot more successful than I am. In any case, I hope you enjoy my version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” featuring Chris Baker on the guitar and backing vocals. 

Check out my recording of Take Me Home, Country Road in the widget below, on Reverbnation, or download it off iTunes!

Thanks for listening,
Josh

Sell Music online at ReverbNation.com