Wandering Roads

Album: Nashville (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by Rhiannon Giddens and Appalachian fiddler Dirk Powell, this poignant acoustic number is about the wandering roads on the journey to self-discovery. Giddens sings it as a duet with Charles Esten.

    Giddens, the lead singer of the old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, joined the TV series Nashville in season 5, playing social worker turned singer Hallie Jordan. The following season, Hallie and guitarist Deacon Claybourne (Charles Esten) performed the tune at the Bluebird Cafe in the episode "That's My Story."

    In the episode, Hallie's troubled friend Juliette is nearing dangerously close to a cult leader who claims he is an important part of her life's journey.
  • When Dirk Powell was producing Heidi Talbot's 2022 album, Sing It For A Lifetime, he played this track for her. A recent divorcee, the Irish folk singer felt an immediate connection with a song about heading home after a rough journey.

    "I cried when I first heard 'Wandering Roads," Talbot said in a Songfacts track by track. "'On the day your journey's done, before a new one has begun, What will you be thinking of, what you owned or who you loved?' It forms part of the album's final promise, the sense of walking towards a new and better horizon. Guy Fletcher plays gorgeous Hammond organ on this track."

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