On the Western Banks of the Shenandoah

From the PilotOnline:

The House Rules Committee on Tuesday killed three resolutions to confer the status on various songs composed by Virginians.

The state has been without a tune since 1997, when “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” was retired because of its lyrics. The song is about a slave fondly recalling the days toiling for “old Massa.”

The Rules Committee for years has been hearing and rejecting potential new state songs.

Actually, its not just the Rules Committee that suffers through greatly enjoys listening to potential offerings. The year I worked in Richmond, there were at least three CDs that came through the office with potential offerings on them. I know that replacing the song has been a pet project of “beloved” State Senator Emmett Hanger, but, come on. Number one, do we really have to out and out replace the state song? Wouldn’t a few changes have fixed the two? Number two, twelve years???? It’s been twelve years, and from my research no less than 23 songs have been considered by the Senate and the House regarding the state song.

However, this doesn’t even include the hard work of the State Song Sub-Committee of the Virginia Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relation. This is the group that worked for 2 YEARS to first whittle the list down to 59 songs then to eight grand finalists. They ran into some flack over Jimmy Dean’s submission being favored and again when another contestant didn’t want to sign over the rights to his song, and then the Committee was abolished in 2004. Apparently, according to the Washington Post, it was only due to the fact that the committee lost the staff person who was keeping track of the votes during that year’s budget crisis. 

Your tax dollars in action. Just pick a damn song already! I don’t even care if its “Meet Virginia” by Train at this point. At least it has the state’s name in it.