Noted Stories

David Ray Skinner

5.0 (3)
Music Commentary

Noted Stories is a weekly podcast that explores the true stories behind the songs of artist and songwriter David Ray Skinner. Drawing from more than 50 years of songwriting, each 24–25 minute episode features two or three of Skinner's original songs, along with the inspiration, experiences, and moments that gave them life.

6d ago

Nashville Fifties

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories chronicles my formative years in Nashville and features three songs I wrote about those days. One of my earliest memories is watching cartoons on our old Motorola TV. Also, my favorite TV ad was a cartoon—the “Rockabilly Pig,” a guitar-playing “spokespig” for Jacobs Preferred, a local meatpacker. Nashville was becoming a rockabilly crossroads, and that dancing pig made quite an impression. Years later, I wrote “The Rockabilly Pig” to remember him. After my family moved to Donelson, I developed a crush on a little girl who dressed like a cowgirl. Her family moved away, but years later I spotted her in one of our family home 8mm Kodak movies. That childhood memory inspired the second song, “Kodacolor Cowgirl.” I also grew up with little red 78 rpm children’s records. However, sometimes on Sundays, Lester Sweatt, a family friend and member of our church, would give me promotional 45s after the morning service. Lester was a Marine Technical Sergeant serving as a recruiter, and he was also involved in producing radio programs for the service, hence his access to promo records. These records introduced me to Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and other rock 'n' roll and rockabilly artists. Later, my father built me a small radio transmitter, and I started my own (not so legal) neighborhood radio station, which I called WKID, and where I was able to spin these records for my little group of friends to hear on their transistor radios. So the last song is “Little Red 78s” and it imagines an elderly man finding comfort in the records he loved as a child. © 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI
Nov 2

States of Mine

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories, “States of Mine,” features three songs about different girls in different states—two fictional, one inspired by a real encounter. The real-life inspiration for “Delaware” came during a road trip to New York with my friend Stephen Kling. We were driving back from NYC to our farmhouse in East Tennessee. On our drive home, we stopped for a burger in Delaware. I thought I saw a free-spirited girl that I’d known in high school walking along the road. I remembered that she’d been from Delaware. However, by the time we turned around, she was gone. Maybe it was her—maybe not, but at any rate, the moment became a song. The other songs were written for my old band, Dog & Pony. “Virginia” imagines a girl waiting in the mountains of East Tennessee and North Carolina. I wanted the girl and the state to share a name. “May in Louisiana” draws on the culture of New Orleans music and my love of Zydeco. It’s a fictional tale of June, April, Spring, and May—four girls in four states. May is the one who captures the singer’s heart—and ignites his aggravation. © 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI
Oct 26

We Ran Coney Island

Send us Fan Mail I met Ran Coney in my first art class at Carson-Newman in 1970. I joked, “Like Coney Island?” He replied, “Yep, only without the roller coaster. Although I may be a hot dog.” Ran was a remarkable artist and songwriter, but he was also humble and kind. We quickly became friends—and friendly rivals. During Friday chapel, we passed notes and played word-chain games, linking phrases until they ended in nonsense. That game inspired this episode’s title: “We Ran Coney Island,” and it’s all about my friendship with Ran from our college days until our Atlanta get-together-singalongs. After my college band broke up, Ran and I formed Friendex with several friends. We once argued over whether the Eagles’ Desperado album was about outlaws or a rock band on the road…or both. To make my case, I wrote this first song in this episode, “Half-Past Chattanooga,” using a band of Southern cavalry as a metaphor for a Southern rock group. Ran later encouraged me to move to Atlanta so we could make music together again. Our gatherings with Carson-Newman friends often ended with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” I wrote the second song of this episode, “Renaissance Café,” as a musical reflection on our college years. Ran helped record it, and we captured our friends singing around his piano and that live recording serves as the song's coda. We lost Ran to leukemia in 1997. At his lakeside service, our friend Filmore Strunk imagined Ran parasailing toward the sky until someone (on the other side) exclaimed, “Look, here comes Ran!” My sister Jann, Joe Holbert, and I sang “The Other Side,” an a cappela song I had written while jogging in Brooklyn. That serves as the third song in this episode. © 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI
Oct 19

Train Tracks

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories, “Train Tracks,” features three songs inspired by my lifelong connection to railroads. Growing up in Nashville, I watched the Christmas parade from Union Station and received a Lionel train that I still run at Christmas. My Donelson elementary school’s annual L&N trip to Gallatin was another childhood highlight. Years later, I rode those same tracks north on my way to California. “The Burlington Line” is a true story song. In 1975, I met an elderly man on an Amtrak train making its way through Montana. He said he felt alone after losing his wife and was growing distant from his children, so that would be his last ride. That night, I watched him leave the train at a foggy station. As we pulled away, I saw its name: Paradise. The encounter inspired this song. “Two Fast Trains” came to me in a dream. It tells of a switchman whose job is to prevent two trains from colliding—and how one bad decision sets off a chain of consequences. “Steel and Steam Lullaby” began with a shaggy-dog story told by Bill Armstrong, the father of my teenage music partner. A boy spends his life waving to trains and calling, “Hello, Mr. Engineer,” but never gets a response. On his deathbed, the engineer finally looks down and says, “Oh…hello, little boy.” My band, Dog & Pony, performed the song…usually after I had told the whole story onstage in front of a groaning audience. © 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI
Oct 12

Kinfolks

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories, “Kinfolks,” features three “relatively true”songs. My love of stories and story songs began with my dad and his family in Jordan Springs, a rural Tennessee community without electricity. In the 1930s, battery-powered radios brought the Grand Ole Opry into my grandparents’ parlor. Neighbors gathered on Saturday nights to listen, sometimes joined by my great-uncle Tom, who played guitar despite having lost fingers in a dynamite accident. He taught my dad, and my dad taught me. The first song, “Tractor Battery Radio,” celebrates those nights and the family who made them possible. My mother’s family lived near the Tennessee River until the TVA moved them to make way for Kentucky Lake. Her father, Daddy Bud, became a deputy sheriff in Dover. He loved wrestling on his black-and-white television, cheering Jackie Fargo and booing Tojo Yamamoto. Years later, I learned the rivals were friends. That inspired the second song, “Motorola Cigarette,” a relatively true song blending Daddy Bud’s love of wrestling and hand-rolled cigarettes with a tale of the wrestlers traveling together. “Soapbox Derby Days” recalls my cousin Gary, born ten days after me and as close as a brother. In 1964, he won Camden’s Soapbox Derby and earned a trip to Akron for the finals. Years later, living in Brooklyn Heights, I remembered our childhood summers and wrote the song about the closeness—and distance—of growing up. © 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI
Oct 5

Auto Tunes

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories features three car songs: one true, one partly true and one totally fictional. My parents once discovered that, as a toddler, I could correctly name the cars passing us on Sunday drives. Dad was a gifted mechanic, but I never inherited his skills. However, I did inherit his love of old cars—and later, when I was a college art major, I began dropping them into my watercolor paintings. Then, after college, I started writing songs about them. “Filmore’s 55” is true. In the 1970s, my ol' Carson-Newman friend and "Contents Under Pressure" bandmate Filmore Strunk visited our farm in his green 1955 GMC pickup. He called it his “Old ’55,” after the Tom Waits song, which was featured on the Eagles’ 1974 album, “On the Border.” Driving through the East Tennessee mountains with that song on the radio was the inspiration for this tune. “’65 VW Van” is partly true. After my unreliable ’64 Falcon broke down on I-40, I read Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion by flashlight while waiting for sunrise when I could be rescued. The book helped inspire my trip west. Later, I bought a stripped-down 1965 VW van and named it “Van Go,” although, most of the time it didn’t go. At any rate, that old van inspired this song. “Work-a-Daddy Thunderbird” is pure fiction, inspired by James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and my childhood love of red 1957 Ford Thunderbirds. The song follows a worn-out husband who longs for that lost dream and settles for a modified vintage replica. © 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI
Sep 28

Artifacts and Fiction

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories, “Artifacts and Fiction,” takes three events from the past and turns them into songs (with no small amount of creative license). In “Miss Mesopotamia,” a construction worker returns to school to become an archaeologist. On a secret dig in Iraq, his team uncovers what appears to be an ancient beauty pageant. He can’t resist telling the coworkers who once laughed at his ambitions—and one of them tips off a tabloid. “Warm Egyptian Nights” follows a weary West Tennessee farmer who believes that, in a previous life, he swept the floors of an Egyptian pyramid. He wasn’t a pharaoh, but he does miss the warm nights beside the Nile…a different Memphis in a different time. The final song, “The Lyre,” begins with the tradition that Nero played music while Rome burned. Although the instrument he played is commonly described as a fiddle, it most likely was a lute. So, the lute becomes the focus of this song, or rather a lyre (which is actually a yoke lute). I imagine his instrument turning up centuries later in a Jewish shop in Germany on the night of Kristallnacht. The instrument’s journey is fiction, but the destruction and persecution are history—and a reminder to stay alert to their return. © 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI
Sep 21

Lone Star Stories

Send us Fan Mail This episode is called “Lone Star Stories,” and it’s all about Texas. The three songs include a fictional romance, a larger-than-life true story and a Texas-sized tall tale. I wrote the first song, “Café Texaco,” not long after I moved South from New York City. It’s a fictitious mariachi-flavored story about a Brooklyn kid who finds work at a Texas border-town gas station café. The second song, “Lookin’ Back at Luckenbach,” is the true story of an unforgettable trip in 1976. My songwriting partner, Lee Owens, called from San Antonio with unexpected news: We had been invited to perform at the city’s River Festival, and an airline ticket was waiting for me. When I arrived in San Antone, I met Hondo Crouch, the colorful owner and self-appointed mayor of Luckenbach, Texas. After Lee and I performed, Hondo invited us to visit Luckenbach—population four—where we passed guitars around a woodstove before riding across the Texas countryside to his ranch. Lee and I still remember that perfect day and I wrote this song to remember it. The final song, “Picasso,” merges Pablo Picasso with Western Swing. Actually, Picasso never visited America, but this tall tale story song “paints” him as a secret traveler, landing in El Paso, where he meets a young Texas girl and is hired to create a rodeo poster. Unfortunately, the local cowboys don’t appreciate his unusual artistic style. It’s a classic case of “cubes meet dudes.” © 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI

5

out of 5

3 Ratings

Amazing podcast

Jul 17

andyvols78

What an outstanding talented artist. Can’t wait for more episodes from Mr Skinner. McCormack approved!!

Noted Stories is a weekly podcast that explores the true stories behind the songs of artist and songwriter David Ray Skinner. Drawing from more than 50 years of songwriting, each 24–25 minute episode features two or three of Skinner's original songs, along with the inspiration, experiences, and moments that gave them life.

Creator

David Ray Skinner
Years Active

2026
Episodes

18
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© 2026 Noted Stories
Show Website

Noted Stories