Homegrown Honey

Album: Southern Style (2014)
Charted: 53
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Songfacts®:

  • Darius Rucker sings here about a Carolina girl turning heads in the Big Apple.

    Ooh, I dig the way that you move
    You shake it down to your roots
    Did your mama teach you how to do that thing you do
    Yeah, nothing sweeter than wild
    I'll take a sip of that smile


    Rucker wrote the song with Charles Kelley of Lady Antebellum and Taylor Swift's producer, Nathan Chapman. "It's a little different for me. It's not one of those family songs - it's really a country party song," he told Rolling Stone. "It's talking about some country girl who lives in New York City. It's got hooks galore."
  • Rucker told the story of the song to Radio.com: "I was playing golf with Charles Kelley one day," he said. "Charles is probably my best friend in the business, we get along really well. He said, 'Man, we've been in Nashville seven years and have never written a song.' I hadn't really thought about it, but he was right. We had never written a song together."

    "When I got to the session," he continued, "he had this great idea he had started with the opening line, 'Sitting in a bar in New York City everyone here looking New York pretty.'"

    "[When] we finished it, we were sitting around," Rucker concluded, " and I said, 'This is my single.'"

    Nathan Chapman whom Rucker credits as "a genius with melodies," also had a hand in writing the song.
  • The mainly performance video was filmed in Rucker's home state of South Carolina. The clip uses footage from a performance at HTC Center on August 23, 2014 as well as Coastal Carolina University and the Rivertown Bistro in the South Carolina town of Conway.
  • Charles Kelley recalled how he pushed for a writing session with Darius Rucker during a round of their favorite sport. "We were out playing golf, like we always do when he's in town, and I was gettin' on to him that we've never written before, and he said he was writing for a new record," the Lady Antebellum member recalled. "Literally, I didn't give him an out. He was having a busy day actually the next day singing vocals, and he was done until like 8 that night. I'm sure he was tuckered out. I said, 'We have to make this a priority and write,' and sure enough, came up with what I think is a great song."

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