Songfacts®:

• This song is about a backwater redneck who goes insane and kills his daughter by throwing her down a well. Later, he hangs himself in a barn.
• Bob Biggs, who was president of their record label, Slash Records, did not like this. He complained, "It's OK until that piano comes in and ruins it." The band was puzzled since there is no piano on the song. It became clear that Biggs could not tell the difference between a piano and a banjo.
• Femmes frontman Gordon Gano started writing this when he was a sophomore in high school in study hall. It was the first song he played to Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie after meeting in high school. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Kristy - La Porte City, IA, for above 3
• American five-string banjo player Tony Trischka played the banjo on this track.
• The song's storyline of man kills his family before hanging himself upset some. However, Gordon Gano felt it wasn't as controversial as many made it out, as it was just an old-style murder ballad. "It never occurred to me that 'Country Death Song' was risky," he told Mojo magazine. "It's like a traditional ballad, a form that goes back hundreds of years."