Tricia Yearwood - Georgia Rain

It seems like it's been raining for weeks.  Up in Yankeeland it's been snowing, and snowing, and snowing.  But late February in Georgia is the cusp of spring.  In Georgia, it's rain.

Of course, there's a Country song about that, and it's one of the greats.

Country Music is best known for storytelling songs.  The danger is a sentimentality that lurches into the maudlin ("Christmas Shoes" is perhaps the best example of over-the-top sentimentality).  But when that impulse is restrained, and mixed with a strong tablespoon of bitter-sweet, the results can be marvelous.

Trisha Yearwood recorded this in 2005 on her spectacular album "Jasper County".  The bitter-sweet is the dominant theme throughout; it's said that you can't go home again, but what happens when you do?  This is one of my favorite Country songs: not quite the platonic ideal of Country Music perfection, but you can see it from there.



Georgia Rain (Songwriters: Ed Hill, Karyn Rochelle)

Barefoot in the bed 'a your truck
On a blanket lookin' up
Half a moon peekin' down at us
From underneath the clouds
Teenage kids sneakin' out again
Heard the thunder rollin' in
We were fallin' the moment when
It all came pourin' down

The Georgia rain
On the Jasper County clay
Couldn't wash away
What I felt for you that day
Just you and me down an old dirt road
Nothin' in our way
Except for the Georgia rain

Cotton fields remember when
Flash 'a lightnin' drove us in
We were soaked down to the skin
By the time we climbed inside
And I don't remember what was poundin' more
Heart in my chest or the hood of that Ford
As the sky fell in, the storm clouds poured
Worlds away outside

The Georgia rain
On the Jasper County clay
Couldn't wash away
All the love we made
Just you and me down that old dirt road
No one saw a thing
Except for the Georgia rain

Screen door flappin' in the wind
Same ol' house I grew up in
Can't believe I'm back again
After all these years away
You fixed your Daddy's house up nice
I saw it yesterday when I drove by
Looks like you've made youself a real good life
What else can I say

The Georgia rain
On the Jasper County clay
Couldn't wash away
The way I loved you to this day
The ol' dirt road's paved over now
Nothin' here's the same
Except for the Georgia rain