“County Fool” is by Patrick McDougal, a banjo player and songwriter born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. As a boy he watched his father, Robert McDougal, play the Grand Ole Opry in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He later settled in Hendersonville, North Carolina, where he ran a music store and teaching studio, and he played with Herschel Sizemore, Jimmy Haley and the Blue Dogs, among others. He is best known for writing “Wheels,” the title song of Dan Tyminski’s album, and his songs have also been recorded by the Lonesome River Band, Junior Sisk, BlueRidge and Del McCoury.
The song was first recorded for Alan Bibey’s first solo album, In the Blue Room, released by Sugar Hill in May 2000. Bibey, a mandolinist, had played with IIIrd Tyme Out and the New Quicksilver and was then in BlueRidge. For “County Fool” he brought in Del McCoury to sing lead, with Bibey singing harmony on the chorus, Tim Stafford on guitar, Jim Mills on banjo, Jerry Douglas on dobro and Barry Bales on bass.
The lyric is a goodbye to an unfaithful lover. Rumors are flying all over town that she is “stepping out and painting the town,” and people say he doesn’t see it. In the second verse he admits he should have known from her eyes, behind “the softest of voices and the sweetest of smiles.” His answer is to leave: he won’t spend the night waiting and wondering, he’ll “catch the next grey dog that’s leavin’,” and “I ain’t gonna be a county fool.”
McDougal recorded it himself as banjo player with High Windy, on their 2008 Mountain Home album A Greater Storm. Bluegrass & Beyond (2005) and Barbwire Bluegrass (2009) also cut it. In June 2020 the duo Boone & Foster, Troy Boone and Aaron “Frosty” Foster, released it as a single on Mountain Fever. Bluegrass Today noted the song’s “skipped beat, crooked measure twist.” The track then appeared on their 2023 album Smoky Mountain Favorites.
