Going to Georgia

Lyrics

The most remarkable thing about coming home to you is the feeling of being in motion again
It's the most extraordinary thing in the world

I have two big hands and a heart pumping blood and a 1967 Colt .45 with a busted safety catch
The world shines as I cross the Macon county line
Going to Georgia

The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you
And that you're standing in the doorway
And you smile as you ease the gun from my hand and I’m frozen with joy right where I stand
The world throws its light underneath your hair
Forty miles from Atlanta, this is nowhere
Going to Georgia

Banter

• I wrote this song on Christmas morning in like ‘93. I know, we’re all old. And to me, at the time, Georgia was a distant continent shrouded in mystery and I never figured I’d ever see it. I lived on the west coast; those of us who grew up in California aren’t really fully convinced that there’s another world beyond southern California. I remember the day in 1998 that Simon Joyner and I were on the highway and I crossed the Macon County line and I was like, 'Holy fucking shit.’ (2006-08-10)
• I don't know, have we played this song once this tour? [Peter: Once.] Maybe once. This is a very old song. And if I remember correctly, I wrote it on either Christmas Day or the day after, and I was like man, there's something in that song. And I wrote it 4 or 5 times, 'cause I was pretty excitable in those days. And there was a version that went like this [intense strumming that only very loosely resembles Going to Georgia] but I didn't settle on that. I didn't wind up using any of the versions that I recorded and thought, maybe that song will just die. But then I did it on a radio show about a month later and that's the version that wound up on Zopilote Machine. (2009-12-01 Webster Hall)
• Audience: Going to Georgia?
  JD: I hate that song. You have to give me hundreds of dollars. I’ll play ‘Going to Georgia,’ but you have to give me cash.
  Audience guy: I’ve got sixty dollars.
  JD: Give me sixty dollars. This is not for charity; it’s for me… This is a song that I consider misogynistic garbage. Here’s the thing - so the thing about songs that, when you’re a young songwriter, if you’re young - I must say male songwriter - you think it’s kind of romantic if your narrator would like hurt someone to prove how desperately in love he is. That’s pathetic. I don’t know any young male songwriter who doesn’t think that’s true, but it’s pathetic, right? But, as a young male songwriter in 1993, I was good at being pathetic. [starts song] I wanna say to interrupt the narrator – the most extraordinary feeling in the whole world is to wake up in jail. That’s a really extraordinary feeling. So compared to this guy being wrapped up in his own ideas and feelings, to wake up and go, ‘Oh, I’m in jail… Wow, my feelings don’t count for shit. This is jail.’ And you knock on the bars and go, ‘Hey man, like I’m a singer-songwriter. You have to let me out of here.’ And then the guy who you went to high school with goes, ‘No I don’t.’ And you say, 'But Lance,’ 'cause that’s his name 'Well, Lance, you gotta let me out of here,’ and he says, 'No, I don’t.’ (2016-11-21)

Live Performances

• 2009-12-01 Webster Hall

Footnotes