Allen Reynolds wrote “Wrong Road Again” and produced Crystal Gayle’s recording of it. Reynolds was born in North Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1938. He had written the Vogues’ 1965 pop hit “Five O’Clock World,” had worked at Sun Records in Memphis, where he befriended Jack Clement, and later joined Clement’s company in Nashville. Clement’s studio, Jack’s Tracks, is where Gayle cut the song on 15 August 1974. The session players included Reggie Young and Jim Colvard on guitars, Lloyd Green on steel and dobro, and Buddy Spicher on fiddle. United Artists released it as a single on 27 September 1974, with “They Come Out at Night” on the other side, and it reached No. 6 on the Billboard country chart. It also opened her first United Artists album, Crystal Gayle, in February 1975.
The singer knows a lover’s soft lines and the web being spun, and still can’t say no. In the chorus she heads down the same wrong road again, back to a place she has already been, knowing how it will end. Gayle’s sister Loretta Lynn opened her MCA album Home with the song in August 1975.
Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys recorded it for Cold Wind (Rounder, 1983), and John Hartford cut it at the Cowboy Arms Hotel & Recording Spa in Nashville for Gum Tree Canoe (Flying Fish, 1984). Lynn Morris sang it on You’ll Never Be the Sun (Rounder, 1999), with Ron Stewart, Jesse Brock and Marshall Wilborn. The Lonesome River Band made it the opening track of Mayhayley’s House (Mountain Home, 2017), recorded at Crossroads Studios in Arden, North Carolina.
