Kentucky Borderline
By Rhonda Vincent and Terry Herd
“Kentucky Borderline,” written by Rhonda Vincent and Terry Herd, was first released in 2003 on Vincent’s One Step Ahead (Rounder). In January 2004, it hit #1 on Bluegrass Unlimited National Bluegrass Survey and later that year was named “Song of the Year” by the International Bluegrass Music Association.
The song was recorded again in 2005 as part of Vincent’s first official DVD project, Ragin’ Live (Rounder), which was nominated for a Grammy. That particular project didn’t win, but many years later, in 2017, “Kentucky Borderline” became part of Vincent’s next live DVD, All the Rage: Volume One, which did win a Grammy.
Long a staple for Vincent and her band The Rage, the song celebrates the Kentucky borderline — specifically, a glorious train journey across it. “Train songs and bluegrass go together so well. Why wouldn’t a train want to go to Kentucky … all the people that love trains live there,” said Herd, summing up the song’s main feeling.
A Bad Experience Yields the Perfect Title
Songwriters pick up titles in the strangest of places, some more surprising than others. While I know this to be true, I must admit, I would never have guessed where the title “Kentucky Borderline” came from, as shared by Terry Herd in our conversation about the song.
Herd and Vincent had written together previously when the idea for this song started. “Rhonda called one day—maybe early June 2001—to tell me that she’d like a different song to close her shows with,” recalled Herd. “She’d been using ‘Mule Skinner Blues,’ a driving song that everyone could sing along with.”
Vincent, too, remembers the moment the spark hit for the new song. “I was walking through Opry Mills Mall, when something came to me—basically that melody that later became the hook,” she said. “I called Terry and sang into his voice mail. I was wanting that feel … an up-tempo, hard-driving bluegrass song. People write slow ballads and love songs, but something that is fast-moving, in-your-face bluegrass is harder to find. Once I started writing with Terry, I found that I could give him an idea and he would take it and run with it.”
With Vincent’s call in mind, Herd began by thinking about “Mule Skinner Blues,” and its hooky, singable phrase, Kentucky way — hey-hey-hey. While he didn’t want to copy the existing song, he did want to play off that key element to create the type of song she wanted. “I don’t know how long it took me to think about it, but I can tell you when it crystallized,” Herd said of finding the title to the song. “It crystallized in a (bad) Chinese restaurant on June 25, 2001. It was a Monday—my birthday—and I wanted to go out for Chinese food. But you almost can’t find a Chinese restaurant that’s open on a Monday. I called around and finally found one in Franklin that was open.”
Once inside, Herd quickly realized the meal would be a long ordeal, with just one person wearing all the hats—server, table busser, cashier. “We waited an hour for the food, and it wasn’t good,” he said. After suffering through as cheerfully as he could, Herd finally got in line to pay up. That is when the unexpected happened. “When we walked up to the register, there was a lady in front of me with her friend, and she was smoking. She was on the phone to her husband, who was obviously a long-haul trucker,” said Herd. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but she was right in front of me. I was just waiting, praying that the poor gal that was taking care of everybody could get up there to take my money because I really wanted out of there. So, the lady gets off the phone, turns to her friend and says, ‘He’ll be here in about an hour and a half. He’s just now crossing the Kentucky borderline.’”
And there it was … the song’s perfect title! “My whole demeanor changed, and my wife could not understand why,” said Herd, who will never forget that raspy, smoker’s voice drawling out the perfect phrase. “As we walked out, I said, ‘I’ve got it!’ and my wife is like ‘You’ve got what? A sore throat from the smoke?’ I said, ‘I’ve got the title of the song! It’s Kentucky Borderline.’ And I could hear it in my head, in melody and meter … Kentuckee-he-he-hee borderline.”
Collaboration Where You Can Get It
As if that wasn’t an already intriguing enough backstory, there are even more entertaining twists behind this song that took its sweet time coming together. With title and concept now coming into view, Herd pondered mode of transportation … what was it that was heading toward that borderline? “A Jet?” he thought. “But that’s probably not a cool bluegrass tune. ‘A car? A bus?’ Maybe, but everybody loves train songs, and Rhonda had had a good run with ‘Passing of the Train,’ so a train made sense.”
To authenticate the train elements in the song and find further inspiration, Herd took himself to a model train convention that was happening in Nashville. “The first lines of the song had come to me, She pulled out of Mobile in the pouring rain / Moving through the darkness like a hurricane,” explained Herd, who wanted to know if there were any trains that ran from the Gulf Coast up through Kentucky.
After networking — and incidentally, buying $150 worth of videos at the event—Herd was pointed in the direction of a railroad route aficionado who sold train maps. “I asked him the question, and he told of railroad tracks from back in the 1800s,” explained Herd. “They went all the way, but there was no evidence that a particular railroad ran that route start to finish. He (also) said the L & N ran from Louisville to Nashville, but I couldn’t say it ran all the way down through that area.”
Deciding the train would be the L & N, and that the route was close enough, Herd worked out the lines: From southern Gulf Port waters / to the Cumberland so green / from Louisville to Nashville / and all points in between. He then began working on the chorus lines, which originally began black smoke a rollin’/ whistle a blowin’/ listen to her engine keeping time / Kentucky borderline. “Rhonda hadn’t heard any of this yet,” recalled Herd, so it was time to work together. “About that time, it so happened that Rhonda’s SUV was in for repairs. She had about two hours of time in the waiting room, and she called me. It was 10 minutes from where I live, so I ran down there and met her.”
Vincent had her mandolin, and she and Herd began working and singing—there in the middle of the shop’s waiting room. First up was that line of the chorus, black smoke a rollin’/ whistle a blowin’. “There was a guy in the room reading a magazine,” said Herd. “He didn’t know who we were, but he was kind enough to ask what kind of train we were singing about. We told him it’s a steam locomotive, and he said, ‘Well, that isn’t black smoke then, cause black smoke comes out of a diesel. That’d be white smoke.” Just then, his name was called, he got his car, and he left. I have no idea who he was, but he fixed the black-smoke line to the white-smoke line.”
With time and teamwork—and a few outside contributors both witting and unwitting—this award-winning song came together. Of course, every great song deserves a great singer, and according to Herd, Vincent did the job perfectly. “The song was written for and with Rhonda, with her voice in mind,” he said. “I’ll tell you, it’s the only song I’ve ever written that I heard in my head start to finish exactly like Rhonda did it. It floored me when I heard her play it. The ironic thing is she wanted a show closer, but for the next number of years, she opened her shows with it.”
“Kentucky Borderline” has remained a classic in Vincent’s live shows. “I never tire of it,” she said. “I love the tempo and the content. Terry put the bulk of it together, this amazing song that I’m excited to have.”
Rhonda Vincent is featured in this issue of Bluegrass Unlimited. Check out our cover story by Dan Miller to learn all about her history, current album, tour schedule, songwriting and more. Also visit rhondavincent.com. Terry Herd is the co-founder and CEO of Bluegrass Today® and host of Into The Blue®, America’s largest and longest running bluegrass radio syndication. Learn more about Terry at bluegrasstoday.com.
