[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bELm2woP508]
Update: The video I originally used for this post is no longer available. This means my rant about clapping on the right beat makes a little less sense, but it's still accurate.
I picked this song because I wanted to research it's origin a little deeper than I knew it. This video has given me another topic on which to write, though. If you're at a concert and are going to clap along with a song, you clap on beats two and four, not one and three!!! If you can't find the right beats by counting - some people who aren't musically inclined can't - then, clap with the drum that sounds closest to a clapping sound itself! The kick drum goes "boom" on beats one and three; the snare drum goes "bang" on beats two and four. Clap with the snare drum. There, I feel better now.
I've always heard that this song isn't really about West Virginia, but instead, western Virginia. That's completely untrue apparently. Denver wrote the song with Taffy Nivet and Bill Danoff. Nivet and Danoff had pretty much written the song entirely, but their version was based on a drive through part of Maryland on the way to a friend's home. Danoff had a friend that would often write and tell him about WV and how beautiful it is. After Denver heard the song, he had to have it, even though it was originally intended to be sold to Johnny Cash. After an all-night writing session, the three got the song just write, describing my home state of West Virginia.
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