Singled Out: The Waymores' Road Worn

Keavin Wiggins | 04-08-2022

Photo by Lindsay Garrett courtesy Hello Wendy

The Waymores just released their sophomore album, "Stone Sessions" and to celebrate we asked Kira Annalise to tell us about the song "Road Worn". Here is the story:

We both remember the day we unpacked our suitcases and put our clothes in the dresser. I cried, not knowing if/when we'd return to the life on the road we'd come to love.

It took several weeks into the pandemic, when we were all under quarantine, for us to come to terms with the fact that we weren't going back to work anytime soon. We had been touring for 200 days a year and living out of suitcases for so long that it was a big adjustment, being home all the time. Road Worn pays homage not only to our lives on the road and how much we love touring and getting to see the world, but to a lot of our heroes as well. While writing it, we thought about what our heroes would do in this situation. We thought of songs that had gotten us through tough times in the past.

When Willie and I first met, he introduced me to Must've Been High by The Supersuckers and much of our love story began while listening to those tracks. There's a song on that album called Roadworn and Weary and it perfectly describes life on the road so we showed our appreciation for that track in the opening lines of the chorus. We were missing even the rough aspects of the road at that point and it felt fitting. The next line moves to Townes Van Zandt who is like a God in our world. Townes taught us that you can sing the most depressing song but keep your audience laughing in between to help lighten the room a bit. We like to think of every room we play to as friends so our shows get very intimate and there's a wide range of emotions during; mostly laughter though. We paid our respects to Townes in this line with "singin' for the sake of the song."

We lost one of our biggest influences during the pandemic: John Prine. It hit us both really hard. We truly believed that one day we'd get to share the stage with him and to have him taken from the world was just devastating. We did our best to honor his writing style at the end of the chorus and again with the tags in the final chorus.

True country music is one of the only genres that really emphasizes respecting your elders. We take that part of our genre very seriously and we're always looking for ways to carry on what those who came before us have done.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the album here