SHANE MCCAULEY
JAMES McMURTRY
Texan singer-songwriter James McMurtry looks at New Jersey from the perspective of an outsider in his “Down Across the Delaware.”
His protagonist is a Southerner, living in New Jersey or New York (or maybe living in New Jersey and working in New York). Anyway, he’s tired of urban life, and the cold of a Northeast winter, and looking to get out. He pledges to rent a U-Haul truck, pack up his stuff and drive south on the Turnpike, across the Delaware River, into Pennsylvania or Delaware, “Where the Garden State gives way to the real world … We’ll mend our wounds and wait out the winter, down across the Delaware.”
McMurtry released the song on his 1995 album, Where’d You Hide the Body. Below is a YouTube video of him performing it in a radio station studio in 2009.
New Jersey celebrated its 350th birthday in 2014. And in the 350 Jersey Songs series, we marked the occasion by posting 350 songs — one a day, from September 2014 to September 2015 — that have something to do with the state, its musical history, or both. To see the entire list, click here.