Where are John Denver’s country roads?
‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ is an instruction as much as it is a hit song. The John Denver classic has been a permanent feature of road trip playlists since its 1971 release, inspiring a slew of covers from the likes of the Toots and the Maytals and Lana Del Rey, and one singular question: where are those country roads? “Almost Heaven, West Virginia” is a deceptively lacklustre clue, but entire tourism boards have dedicated themselves to pinpointing where precisely the winding road’s Denver waxes lyrical about.
Denver and his co-writing partners, Bill and Taffy Danoff, didn’t seem to know themselves. Before releasing the soon-to-be platinum hit, none had been to West Virginia. In one interview with NPR, Bill said the idea was to conjure up visions of someplace “exotic” and far away: “West Virginia might as well have been in Europe, for all I knew.” As he grappled with the song’s setting, he envisioned it sung by a country heavyweight like Johnny Cash.
While they were toying with the lyrics to kill time on a drive in Maryland, they found themselves cruising down Clopper Road in Gaithersburg. “Take me home, Clopper Road” didn’t seem a good fit, so they eventually changed that. Likewise, the original lyric was meant to be: “Almost heaven, Massachusetts.” Bill was from there, but even hometown pride couldn’t save that clunky line.
West Virginia, a place they’d never seen or been, had the perfect ring to it. But the Danoffs were so attached to the idea of Cash performing it they almost didn’t want to show Denver the demo they had when they were all performing together in Washington. An overnight effort to complete the song meant they were performing it the next day to rapturous applause.
Ultimately, the reception would have been as warm if any American state was picked out of a hat. While people have often gotten caught up in the technical “where” of everything, the idea was to capture some romantic pilgrimage. Bill Danoff told the Library of Congress that line of thinking drove him to pen the track. “The thought that originally drove me to write the song, that this experience of enjoying driving down the country road, was a universal one, and it proved to be correct,” he said. “People all over seem to like those ‘country roads’ that promise to go to the place you belong.”
Naturally, that whimsical answer isn’t enough for some – which is where the West Virginia Tourism Office comes in. Having gained the rights to use the track in marketing materials, the song belongs as much to them – in spirit – as Denver. The almost heaven line is even an office slogan there. While the piece wasn’t written with a specific road in mind, the scenic mountains of West Virginia are about as close as you’ll get to pinpointing where the country road was leading.
