Take Me Home, Country Roads
Taking you behind my storytelling process as an emcee
This past week, my community band put on a spring concert. I play the flute and piccolo, and in recent concerts, I’ve also adopted the moniker of “emcee.” The previous emcee retired, and my band director asked me to take over. This is what happens when you speak for a living—you are frequently asked to take over the speaking roles.
Emceeing is different than giving keynotes. As an emcee, I want to inject energy into the audience, allow for the band to set up for the next song, and add to the overall experience with edutainment (part humor, part education). If I’ve done my job right, the audience learns something new about the piece or artist that they would repeat to others the next time they hear the song.
The concert was a transportation theme. Each piece was about traveling by plane, car, spaceship, train, and boat. One of the songs was, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver. I am not a John Denver fan and I dread country music. This had me face the question I’ve received so many times: How do I tell a compelling story when my topic is boring? I want to take you behind the scenes of how I developed the story for this introduction.
What is the origin?
My research began with opening Google and typing: “’Take Me Home Country Roads’ Origin.” I frequently start searches with, “’name of topic’ origin.” I want to see the common information that most people already know and how much I need to dig to get to unexpected elements.
The song was written by a husband-and-wife folk singing team, Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert. They were driving on a winding two-land road on their way to a family reunion in Maryland. Instead of playing the license plate game, they started making up lyrics and putting together a song. They realized it was pretty good and hoped to sell it to Johnny Cash.
A month later, they were meeting up with John Denver for a jam session. They played him the song, and John immediately said he wanted it. The three of them stayed up all night working on the piece. They finished it hours before John was scheduled to perform at the Cellar Door in Washington DC. He invited Bill and Taffy to sing the song, and they got a five-minute standing ovation.
What is unexpected?
With the beginnings of a solid story, I wanted to uncover some unexpected elements. Like how did the song begin in Maryland but end up being placed in West Virginia? What did John Denver love about the song? What happened the night it was performed at the Cellar Door?
My second step is to search for interviews and articles that help dig into more details. These help you learn what people were thinking or what motivated their actions. I discovered that the song was almost set in Massachusetts, where Bill had grown up. When it didn’t fit the vibe, they chose West Virginia, a place none of them had been.
How do you help the audience feel like they are there?
As I looked at interviews, I looked for descriptions that took us into the car ride, the long night of composing, and the performance at the Cellar Door. I wanted elements that made the audience feel like they were seeing, hearing, feeling and experiencing the events in person. I learned that they taped handwritten lyrics onto the microphone stand for that first performance, having only finished the song hours before.
I also looked for quotes from interviews and biographies to describe Bill, Taffy, and John’s experience. They talked about the five-minute standing ovation and how the walls of the club felt like they were vibrating. Now we can picture the small, smoky nightclub, stage and the microphone stand.
How to create that “Oh, I didn’t know that!” moment?
This story has two big, unexpected elements: the song was almost set in Massachusetts, and they had never been to West Virginia. I wanted to reveal those elements towards the end of the story. I built tension to that moment and released it with this zing of surprise. Then I describe the live performance so they can feel like they are there.
The final touch
The average age of the audience at our band concert is somewhere around 70 – 75. These people remembered the song coming out and being popular. I threw in a joke in the beginning about 1970 feeling like it wasn’t that long ago to make them pay attention and get a chuckle.
Here’s the story I told:
In 1971, which was just 20 years ago, a married couple Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff were driving to a family reunion. They were on Clopper Road in Maryland, which was a two-line, winding country backroad.
They started making up lyrics about country roads and journeys and realized they had a little ditty on their hands. Little did they know this song written in Maryland would become a state anthem for West Virginia.
They planned to finish the song and sell it to Johnny Cash. But they were scheduled for a jam session with John Denver, as one does. John had broken his thumb and couldn’t play. They played this song they had been working on and John immediately said he had to have it.
As John Denver said in his biography, “In the wee hours of the morning, sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, in their basement apartment in Washington, D.C., we wrote ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’ It became my first Number One record.”
But the song wasn’t always set in West Virginia. Maryland lost out because it didn’t have the right syllables. For a short time, the song was going to be for Massachusetts, where Bill is from. But “mass-a-chu-setts” didn’t have the same vibe and they went with West Virginia instead. A state that none of them had ever visited.
The next night, John Denver was performing at the Cellar Door in Georgetown. He calls Taffy and Bill to the stage to help perform the song. The lyrics were still roughly written on a sheet of paper taped to the mic stand.
They got a five-minute standing ovation. Bill said “The walls were vibrating. I thought the club was going to implode.”
I could have introduced the song, the composer and described the number of weeks it was on the Top 100 songs list. But by digging into a few details, I gave the audience an experience and a story they will repeat to others.
If your topic is boring, keep searching. Dig beyond the first-level search results. Get curious, the story emerges in the details.
If you now have “Take Me Home Country Roads” stuck in your head, I’m sorry.
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Want help figuring out how to make your story interesting? Need help getting started? I’m opening up a few spots this summer for one-on-one coaching. This may be for you if you are:
Reading The Perfect Story and want someone to guide you through applying concepts
Want to talk through how to apply concepts in a specific setting
Want help figuring out the stories to include in a presentation
Want a check-in on some existing stories
Reach out here for more information.
