“Rough Edges” is a song by Randall Hylton, the songwriter and guitarist from southwest Virginia whose songs were recorded by Ralph Stanley, Lester Flatt, the Lewis Family, the Bluegrass Cardinals and Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, among many others. Hylton moved to Nashville in 1973 to write country songs; when that did not work out, he turned in 1977 to writing for bluegrass bands. He won the SPBGMA songwriter of the year award in five of six consecutive years.
The song is a farewell. Its singer knows that the friends of the woman he loves do not approve of him, and he does not argue: he will never belong in her world and sees no point in trying. He has rough edges, he tells her, and cannot change them even for her. She can try to carve and shape him, but he is “brittle as coal,” and the edges will never come smooth. He does not regret falling in love, and he was proud to call her his, but the last verse tells her it is time to part.
Two recordings appeared in 1993. The Bluegrass Patriots opened their Turquoise album The Last Waltz with it, Glenn Zankey singing lead and Charles Sawtelle the harmony. The Traditional Grass, from Ohio, recorded it in June 1993 at Rivertracks Studio in Louisa, Kentucky, for 10th Anniversary Collection on Rebel, with their banjo player Joe Mullins singing lead and Gerald Evans Jr. and Mark Rader singing with him.
Wildfire made it the opening track of Uncontained, released by Pinecastle in August 2001, with Darrell Webb and Robert Hale sharing the lead, Scott Vestal on banjo, Phil Leadbetter on dobro and Curt Chapman on bass. Hylton died that year, and Pinecastle’s tribute collection In Memory of a Friend: A Tribute to Randall Hylton also begins with Wildfire singing “Rough Edges.” The song travelled to Europe too: Roll’s Boys recorded it in the Czech Republic in June 2004 for their album Behind Bars.
