A then little-known Brooks penned this song about following one's dreams with Nashville songwriter Victoria Shaw. Released in April 1992 as the fifth single from Ropin' the Wind, it became Brooks' ninth #1 hit on the Billboard Country chart.
Shaw recalled the writing of the song to The Tennessean: "I met Garth at the Opryland Hotel during Country Radio Seminar. His album hadn't come out yet, but his managers introduced me, and we just became friends," she said.
"That song really summed up where we were, such dreamers. We're still like that. But we were such big dreamers and really inspired. He came over and we wrote this song. I've told this story, that we put (the recording) on the boombox, and he's sitting on the floor and I'm sitting on the couch, listening to it over and over, and he said, 'Can't you just imagine a stadium full of people waving their lighters, singing this song?' And I thought, 'Oh my God, he's so delusional. People don't do that in country.' And I learned such a good lesson."
This was inspired by listening to some James Taylor music after the pair couldn't come up with anything and the singer-songwriter's folky acoustic fed through into the song. Shaw recalled: "We were blank, so blank. And so finally, he said, 'You know what? Let's just take a break. What are you listening to on the stereo?' And I had just bought this new James Taylor CD, so I put it on and were just listening to it ... , and it got us in a mood."
"You can listen to music," Shaw continued, "and it takes you somewhere else in your head. It just frees up your brain. So we were listening to this, and all of a sudden, in the middle of (a song), he goes, 'turn it off. I've got something.' He literally picked up a guitar and just went, 'You know a dream is like a river...' He had probably the first few lines. They just came out, and it was like, 'Oh, OK, that's where we're going.' Although, I did try to talk him out of (using the word) 'vessel.' I thought that was a weird word, and now 'vessel' is one of my favorite words..."
"I was so wrong, and I hate saying that, but I was smart enough to go, 'OK, I'll go with it.' It was a special song, but to me it was just this little quiet folky dream song."
When Brooks finally cut the tune, it was supposed to be for his second album, No Fences, but it didn't make it onto the final tracklisting. Shaw recalled: "He called me and goes, 'I'm sorry, Vic, it just didn't work.' And I thought, 'Well, there goes my chance to be on a Garth record.' And then the third album comes out, and he did it there, and he was so huge, that people gave him the courtesy of listening. It was over four minutes. It was so different, and had it been any other artist, they would have thrown that (song) out. But because people wanted to know what he felt, what he said, they gave it the courtesy of listening to it, and then they loved it."
The song features background vocals from Brooks' longtime friend and collaborator Trisha Yearwood, whom he later married.
Shaw wasn't the only one who was apprehensive about the word "vessel." Brooks' manager, Bob Doyle, was so worried country music wouldn't accept it that his fears rubbed off on Brooks. "He was worried about it, which kind of made me question whether we should cut it or not," the singer recalled in his 2017 book, The Anthology Part 1: The First Five Years. "So we don't cut it until three years after we wrote it. Just scared to death."
Brooks performed this on the March 14, 1992 episode of Saturday Night Live.
The album title was kicking around in the back of Brooks' brain for years, only he didn't realize it. His college roommate, Ty England - who also plays acoustic guitar and provides backing vocals on the album - left school to go back home and work at a paint store, putting his music aspirations on hold. A friend of England's father said he'd "have better luck ropin' the wind than making a living in music." The phrase popped back into Brooks' mind while England was performing with him at a packed honky-tonk in Dallas in support of the massively successful No Fences album. He thought, "Hmm, maybe we're all out here just ropin' the wind."
Ropin' The Wind made history as the first album by a country artist to debut at #1 in America. It also reached #1 on the Country albums chart, making Brooks the first singer to top both charts since Kenny Rogers did so in 1980 with his Greatest Hits album.
