The reason behind the creation of the famous song “Country Road” from “Logan Lucky” and the surprising relationship between Soderbergh-style crime film techniques

“One of the best country songs” born from a sophisticated image

At the beginning of Logan Lucky, Jimmy, played by Channing Tatum, tells his young daughter Sadie the story behind the creation of "Country Roads." Jimmy, who is in his 30s, probably didn't hear the song in real time, but the fact that he tells his daughter the story behind the creation of the hit song as if it were a legend or a fairy tale is also a testament to Jimmy's love for the hometown he was born and raised in. In 2014, the song was designated as the (fourth) state song of West Virginia, as it proclaims West Virginia to be "Almost Heaven."

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However,... As Jimmy Logan mentions in the film, John Denver, the man who made ``Country Roads'' a hit, had never set foot in West Virginia. Not only that, Bill Danoff, the songwriter who appears in Jimmy's birth story, also has no connection to West Virginia. In the film, Bill Danoff and his wife, Taffy Nibert, bring the unfinished version of "Country Roads" to Denver, and the one night they complete the song together, but here we'll go into more detail. I would like to go back in time and find out the secret story of its birth.

Bill Danoff came up with the idea for ``Country Roads'' during a road trip to visit Tuffy's parents, before they were married. While driving down a winding country road, Danoff comes up with a song about "the road that takes me home." At that time, I was not running in West Virginia at all, but in Maryland, near the capital, Washington, DC. However, Danoff chose "West Virginia" simply because the four-syllable place name suited the melody. It could have been Massachusetts, where Danoff was born and raised.

There's a story going around among music fans that Danoff and Denver wrote the lyrics without knowing anything about West Virginia. The song begins with, ``West Virginia is like heaven, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River,'' but the Blue Ridge Mountains are not in West Virginia, and the Shenandoah River only runs along the edge of the state. In Japan, it would be like a song about Tokyo praising the mountains of Hakone and Lake Ashi, or a song about Kyoto City singing about Lake Biwa and the Yodo River. I have to say that the lyrics are quite sloppy.

The laid-back countryside setting sets the pace of the film.