Every few years, the genesis of John Denver’s well-known song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” resurfaces in viral social media posts, igniting controversy in our community. The road in Take Me Home, Country Roads is really Clopper Road in Gaithersburg, not West Virginia, according to a recent post published by Barstool’s DMV branch. This sparked debates about the song’s genuine history and made us go back and look at the original.
Take Me Home, Country Roads is a beloved West Virginia anthem, but its well-known lyric actually originated on a Maryland trip. Although the lyrics are based on West Virginia, co-writers Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert describe how a straightforward trip along Clopper Road, which is mostly in Gaithersburg and Germantown, led to one of the most enduring folk tunes in American music.
While traveling across Maryland in 1970, Danoff and Nivert ended up on Clopper Road, which at the time was a meandering, rural route. Drawing on his own rural New England heritage, Danoff started repeating the phrase “country roads” while strumming his guitar. Later, he told NBC4 Washington that the first inspiration came from the feel of the road. Len Jaffe, a singer/songwriter from the Washington, DC, area, who attended the song’s Cellar Door debut, stated in a WTOP interview that the road they were actually on was Clopper Road, a little two-lane blacktop in Gaithersburg.
Nevertheless, Maryland wasn’t the main topic of the lyrics. Danoff, who had never been to West Virginia, was further inspired by postcards from a friend and recollections of hearing the Wheeling Jamboree on the radio. He looked for terms that had a lovely, expressive sound. Danoff clarified in an interview, “I just started thinking, country roads.” It has nothing to do with Maryland or any other location. The lyrics “Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River” were my favorites. That led me to West Virginia because these are songwriter words.
John Denver was later introduced to the song by Danoff and Nivert, and the three of them spent the night writing the remaining lyrics at Danoff’s house in Washington, DC. They gave it a five-minute standing ovation when they performed it for the first time the next evening at The Cellar Door in Washington, DC. Take Me Home, Country Roads pays tribute to West Virginia, but its beginning is inextricably linked to that memorable trip along Montgomery County’s Clopper Road.
