Writing
According to Earl Bud Lee, one of the song's co-writers, the idea of the song was born when he and some songwriting friends gathered for lunch one day at Tavern on the Row, a popular Nashville eatery. When the check came, Lee realized he had forgotten his money. He was asked how he was going to pay for the meal, and he replied, "Don't worry. I have friends in low places. I know the cook." Lee and his songwriting partner, DeWayne Blackwell, immediately recognized that the line "friends in low places" had potential, but they didn't act upon it immediately.
Some months later, Lee and Blackwell were at a party, celebrating a recent #1 hit by another songwriter. They began to talk about the dormant "friends in low places" idea, and "at that very moment, it all started to come together in a song," Lee said. Because nothing else was available, they wrote the song on paper napkins. When the songwriters polished "Friends in Low Places", they contacted Garth Brooks to see if he would record a demo for them.
Guitarist Jim Garver would add the name of the bar in the song, "The Oasis", after an establishment in his hometown of Concordia, Kansas.
Read more about this topic: Friends In Low Places
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I thank you for your letter. I was very glad to get it; and I am glad again to write to you. However slow the steamer, no time intervenes between the writing and the reading of thoughts, but they come freshly to the most distant port.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)