Another Town

The singer is on his way out of town. He decides the romance was “just a storybook affair,” expects to become “a faded picture in the book of your mind,” and sends parting words to the woman’s parents: her mother was “sure a dandy cook,” and he understood her father’s looks. The chorus is a list of what waits down the road: another town, another grocery store, “another set of swinging doors,” and the suspicion that it will be another town that doesn’t need his kind. The last verse turns the goodbye into a metaphor: “Time is candy and we ate all that we brought,” and her tears are just the wrappers left on the ground.

J. D. Crowe and the New South recorded the song in 1982 at Bull Run Studios in Nashville for the album Somewhere Between (Rounder 0153), with Keith Whitley singing lead, Wendy Miller tenor and Crowe baritone, and the Jordanaires adding harmony. The band was filled out with Doug Jernigan on steel and dobro, Pete Wade on electric guitar, Jon Probst on piano and Kenny Malone on drums. Rounder also issued it that year as the B-side of the single “I Never Go Around Mirrors” (Rounder 4550).

By then Hall and his wife, the songwriter Miss Dixie Hall, were devoting much of their work to bluegrass. Their publishing companies and the studio on their Fox Hollow farm outside Nashville served bluegrass artists, and the International Bluegrass Music Association gave the couple its Distinguished Achievement Award in 2004 and inducted them into its Hall of Fame in 2018. Josh Williams recorded “Another Town” at Hilltop Studios in Nashville for his 2016 Rounder album Modern Day Man, singing lead and playing guitar.