South Carolina - Digitally Remastered 2001

Founding Outlaws member Henry Paul wrote this song about the pain of separation from being on the road with the band. He says, "That is one of the weirdest songs that I've written. And that's just total separation. Just completely that and nothing more. And my wife was born, or grew up in South Carolina. And from a geographical standpoint, the name Carolina worked okay as a name, a proper noun."

This song is not one that Paul is particularly proud of. Says Paul: "That probably really is one of the weaker songs I've written, but it's a very popular song. It's a really good song; not so much lyrically, but musically it really propels itself and it comes from a musical/spiritual place in me that is very real and very aggressive and upbeat. And so it was always a very popular song. But it didn't go too deep, it skimmed along the top, and when you get to that 'South Carolina, stars in her eyes, Blue Ridge Mountain home in the sky,' I don't know, it's just a collection of words that doesn't really mean much. In my mind I'm singing about my wife, but when I repeat that it almost sounds like a chamber of commerce ad for the state of South Carolina. It sounds like I want to get back to South Carolina, and maybe she represented that because she was there, I don't know. It's a loosely conceived subject that really didn't focus too good. But again, it had a really neat musical sort of backdrop and people just loved it live, so that was kind of part of that musical mosaic from that time period." (Check out our interview with Henry Paul. For more, go to www.blackhawkmusic.us.)