
He used to play it in the clubs, and his live act after he became famous. It's influenced all of these up and coming country acts or even people like Kenny Chesney. People talk about the song, but that record that the Dirt Band made, it so impressed so many people, including Garth Brooks, who has recorded and released it three times. he went, "Man, the Dirt Band, this is perfect for them." I was standing in the right place when they captured lightning in a bottle. Actually Josh and Wendy and I all lived in the same place over on 10th Avenue. Back in the early days, we'd all get together, and Wendy and I would cook. But Josh Leo came from Los Angeles to Nashville at the same time Wendy and I did, and he had just gotten the job to produce the Dirt Band.

They had actually cut a song of mine that Norbert Putnam produced on them, previously. We weren't trying to be like any other song.ĭid you know the Dirt Band in L.A.? How did they get the song? Who would have thunk it?Īnd the first thing I thought was, "I want to run away screaming, because I love my song." But she said, "No, fishing in the dark." We started messing around with it, and it just happened, you know? We did it for fun. It was a song called "You Can't Run Away From Your Heart." Then we got back together again, and she had just finished listening to "A Prairie Home Companion." She said, "Let's write a song about fishing."Īnd again, you two, writing a fishing song. I took both of them to Wendy, and we wrote the minor, bluesy one first, and it got cut by Terri Gibbs, Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless and Lacy J.

Both of them had that same chordal thing, but one of them had the minor mode and one had the major mode. One morning I woke up and I turned on my tape recorder, sat up and played these two pieces of music. I was experimenting with this one particular chording on the guitar that only played the first and fifth tones of the chord, so you could sing either a major or a minor over it. On this one particular visit, I was staying at Shoney's (Inn) over on Demonbreun.
