Song History: Davenport

I was visiting my brother and his wife in Cumberland Gap for the weekend when I ended the trip on a bad note. We were working on something that required a computer. Their office doubled as a scrap-booking and craft area. While it occurred to me to keep liquids away from the computer, it did not occur to me to treat the craft table in a like manner.

Just before I left, I knocked my nearly empty coffee cup over. Though a small amount, the coffee traveled everywhere fast. Needless to say, I messed up some of his wife's scrap-booking materials. We did our best cleanup/salvage job, but the damage was done. She was busy at work and I wasn't able to apologize to her before leaving.

As I made the 3 hour drive back to Nashville I contemplated my clumsiness and lamented my mistake. The phrases "we can't take you anywhere" and "this is why we can't have nice things" came to mind. I started thinking about how maybe everyone I come into contact with should have plastic covers on their furniture. I also thought about how covering your furniture in plastic was a grandmotherly thing to do. My Grandma did not do that (because she was super classy and totally awesome), but she did call her couch a davenport. Davenport rolls off the tongue much better than scrap-booking table, (or any other word with a P next to a B) and so the substitution was made. Suddenly, just before Knoxville, the song came out as a stream of consciousness. Oddly enough, I was able to repeat it. I sang it over and over until I made it to Nashville, where I anxiously put pen to paper upon my arrival.

To this day, Davenport is the only song I've ever written that takes as long to play as it did to write.

Bill Davis