Getaway Car

Album: Tiny Televisions (2020)

Songfacts®:

  • "Getaway Car" is about Waylon Jennings' 1977 drug bust.

    On August 23, 1977, Drug Enforcement Administration agents descended on Jennings' recording studio on 17th Avenue in Nashville, Tennessee. They'd been tipped off after a private courier alerted them about 27 grams of cocaine being shipped from New York City to Jennings. A colleague of Jennings had been sending the drugs as a way to apologize for botching the coordination of a charity trip that Jennings wanted to set up for a girl with brain cancer.

    Jennings flushed the drugs while the bust was going down and ended up escaping punishment, which may have been as severe as fifteen years in prison if he'd been convicted.

    Jennings himself captured this story in his song "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out of Hand," released in 1978 on his I've Always Been Crazy album.
  • Elizabeth Elkins and Vanessa Olivarez - the duo that is Granville Automatic - started working on this song during sessions for their fourth studio album, Radio Hymns, which was released in 2018. In their interview with Songfacts, Elkins described this song as "'70s country-disco fun."

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