Reception in West Virginia
"Take Me Home, Country Roads" received an enthusiastic response from West Virginians. The song is the theme song of West Virginia University and has been performed at every home football pre-game show since 1972. In 1980, Denver performed the song during pregame festivities to a sold-out crowd of Mountaineer fans. This performance marked the dedication of the current Mountaineer Field and the first game for then head coach Don Nehlen. The song is played for other athletic events and university functions, including after football games, for which the fans are encouraged to stay in the stands and sing the song along with the team.
The popularity of the song has inspired resolutions in the West Virginia House of Delegates and Senate to change the state song of West Virginia to "Take Me Home, Country Roads". So far, such resolutions have not carried.
The land features mentioned prominently in the song lyrics – the Shenandoah River and the Blue Ridge Mountains – have only marginal associations with the state of West Virginia, and would seem to be more appropriate to describe western Virginia. The river passes through only the very eastern tip of the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. Similarly, the vast majority of the Blue Ridge also lies outside the state. According to a radio interview with Nivert, the road that inspired the song is nowhere near the state. It is a road close to her native Washington, D.C., in nearby Montgomery County, Maryland, where Denver often visited. Clopper Road still exists today, but the landscape has changed drastically from the bucolic scenery that once surrounded it.
Hillary Rodham Clinton quoted the song in the opening line of her speech following her massive win in the 2008 West Virginia Democratic primary, stating: "You know, like the song says, 'It's almost heaven.'"
Thomas, West Virginia based brewery, Mountain State Brewing Company, produces an amber ale called 'Almost Heaven' "named after John Denver's ode to West Virginia, Country Roads."
The song was played at the funeral memorial for Senator Robert Byrd at the state capitol in Charleston on July 2, 2010.
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Famous quotes containing the words reception, west and/or virginia:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Sometimes, because of its immediacy, television produces a kind of electronic parable. Berlin, for instance, on the day the Wall was opened. Rostropovich was playing his cello by the Wall that no longer cast a shadow, and a million East Berliners were thronging to the West to shop with an allowance given them by West German banks! At that moment the whole world saw how materialism had lost its awesome historic power and become a shopping list.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)