“Carry Me Across the Mountain” was written by John Pennell, Jeff White and Billy Smith; one later credit gives them in full as John Harold Pennell, Jeffery T. White and William P. Smith. Dan Tyminski made it the opening and title track of his first solo album, Carry Me Across the Mountain, released by Doobie Shea in June 2000 and produced by Tyminski with Tim Austin. It was cut at Doobie Shea Studios in Boones Mill, Virginia, with Tyminski singing lead and playing rhythm guitar, Alison Krauss on fiddle and tenor vocal, Ron Block on banjo, Adam Steffey on mandolin, Jerry Douglas on dobro and Barry Bales on bass.
The song is told by the child it is about. The family lives on the side of a mountain, where every day is a gamble and there are babies to feed. The singer, the youngest, falls sick and will not eat. His father prays to accept that fate and warns that they may not make it through, but his mother will not listen: there is said to be a doctor on the far side of the mountain who might save the baby’s life, and she wraps the child in her arms and sets out, crying “what else can I do.” The chorus is the child’s plea to be carried across before it is too late. In the last verse the child is grown and standing on the mountaintop before his mother’s grave, where he comes every year to thank her for that day.
Rounder reissued the album in 2003, and in 2004 put the track on Bluegrass Number 1s: A Collection of Chart-Topping Songs. Tyminski’s performance turned up again on Moneyland, a 2008 various-artists album on McCoury Music. Two of the writers have since recorded it themselves: Billy Smith on Live from the Moose Lodge (2009), and Jeff White on his 2016 album Right Beside You, singing lead with Cheryl White on tenor and Vince Gill on mandolin, Michael Cleveland on fiddle, Charlie Cushman on banjo, and Douglas and Bales returning on dobro and bass.
