“Going Back to Old Virginia” was written by David McLaughlin, the mandolinist of the Johnson Mountain Boys. It was first released in 1993 on Going Back, the Rounder album he made as a duo with the guitarist and singer Josh Crowe after the Johnson Mountain Boys wound down.
The song traveled quickly inside that circle of players: the Crowe Brothers — Josh with his brother Wayne — recorded it the same year on Bridging the Gap, and Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper brought it back around on their 2011 album Fired Up.
It is a homecoming song — the singer turning back toward old Virginia after time away — in the long bluegrass line of home-and-return numbers, and its hard-driving settings have kept it in circulation among traditional-leaning bands.
