Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown

The singer has heard that his partner has been seen with his best friend on the other side of town. He can stand the waiting and the running around, but “if you’re gonna cheat on me, don’t cheat in our hometown.” What hurts is the public shame. He doesn’t know how he can face his friends and “look ’em in the eye,” because there are no secrets in a little country town where “everyone knows everyone for miles and miles around.”

In June 1971 Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs made it the opening track of their Rebel album Second Generation Bluegrass. It was recorded in Clinton, Maryland, with Whitley on guitar, Skaggs on mandolin, Roy Lee Centers on banjo, Curly Ray Cline on fiddle and Jack Cooke on bass. Twelve years later Skaggs returned to it as the title track of his Epic album Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown, which he produced himself. Released as a single in November 1983, it reached No. 1 on Billboard’s country singles chart in February 1984. It was Skaggs’s sixth country No. 1, and it spent twelve weeks on the chart. The album also went to No. 1 on Billboard’s country albums chart.

In 1984 Pennington co-founded the label Step One Records. That year Don Reno recorded the song in Nashville with Ronnie, Dale and Don Wayne Reno in the band, and it appeared on The Final Chapter, a Step One album released in 1986.