“Stormy Horizons” was written by Ira Louvin and Iris Franks. Ira Louvin, of the Louvin Brothers, was a noted harmony singer and songwriter in country music, and the song carries the kind of close, aching harmony the Louvins made their trademark. Jim and Jesse and the Virginia Boys first recorded it in 1962.
The lyric uses a coming storm as a figure for trouble in a relationship: the singer watches dark clouds gather on the horizon and reads in them the end of a love. The weather imagery gives the heartbreak a sense of something large and unstoppable.
The song suits the brother-duet harmony of Jim and Jesse McReynolds, with Jesse’s cross-picked mandolin underneath.
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