Songfacts®:

• Written by Gary Gentry and J.B. Detterline Jr., this lead single from Coe's Castles in the Sand album tells the tale of a hitchhiker who is picked up by the ghost of Hank Williams in an antique Cadillac on a lonely stretch of road from Alabama to Tennessee.
• This song had a 19-week run on the country charts, where it peaked at #4.
• The ghost story doesn't end with the song. Apparently, Hank made it all the way to Opryland to see Coe perform it for a televised special. When he made it to the last verse, with the lyrics "the whole world called me Hank," the lights and power went out.
• Alan Jackson also encountered Hank's ghost in his 1994 hit "Midnight in Montgomery," where he visits the singer's grave in Montgomery, Alabama, as the clock chimes midnight and marks the anniversary of his death, New Year's Day 1954. Before that, Mark Chesnutt and George Jones discovered the late singer living in the woods in their 1992 duet, "Talking to Hank."
• Coe became a friend and mentor to Hank Williams III. The pair released the single "The Outlaw Ways" in 2013.
• Garth Brooks covered David Allan Coe's swampy classic for his 2023 album, Time Traveler. "The story haunted me my entire life," Brooks told Billboard.
  
  Brooks contributed an extra verse to enrich the dialogue between characters on their journey from Montgomery to Nashville. Despite his input, he opted not to claim a songwriting credit for his version. "I'm an a–hole in a lot of different ways, but I just can't be that guy," he said.
  
  "The Ride" finds Brooks taking his first shot at spoken word. The country star confessed he was nervous about how it would turn out. "I was like 'Is this going to sound corny or bad? But when I heard it, I thought, 'That's scary.' I liked it."