Germany Unity Day

I was wondering what their fascination was with Country Roads at Thursday's German Unity Day Party:

All the good things you would expect were available in plenty at the annual “Day of German Unity” party hosted by the embassy in Washington: Heaps of sauerbrauten, vats of good beer, oom-pah music, and for the first time this year, D.C. singer-songwriter Bill Danoff.

For decades, Danoff’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” — a 1971 hit for John Denver — has been a sing-along favorite at Munich’s Oktoberfest, a nostalgic touchstone bound to bring Germans to their feet whenever it’s played.

Why? “I have no idea,” Danoff, 67, told us. “I’ve never been to Germany” — though he’d never been to West Virginia either before he wrote his ode to the Mountain State.

Ask German natives why they get misty-eyed over a song about the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge, what cultural resonance they find in it, and you’ll get a quizzical stare: It’s a really good song, don’t you think?..

Danoff and his band had barely finished before an exuberant emcee rushed to rejoin him on stage.

“Mr. Danoff!” he pleaded. “Could you take us one more time to West Virginia?”

Danoff took a second to process this. They wanted him to do the song, again? He did. The crowd went wild, again. And as we drove away, we heard a familiar tune wafting up from the embassy grounds: Yes, they’d coaxed yet another “Country Roads” out of him that night.