Mountain Home Music has released a clever animated video for their new single with Bryan Sutton, The Devil Went Down to Deep Gap.
The audio track is a reworked version of Charlie Daniels’ mega-hit, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, with the story revised so that it’s a young Doc Watson who gets into a pickin’ competition with the Devil. It all started as a concept for a song that Bryan could record with Billy Strings for his upcoming From Roots to Branches album, and he says it took off from there.
“I had this idea a while ago to come up with some fake legend of how Arthel Watson became Doc Watson. It would be ‘the story that we never knew’ of Doc beating the Devil and from then on, he’d be called Doc.”I had this idea a while ago to come up with some fake legend of how Arthel Watson became Doc Watson. It would be ‘the story that we never knew’ of Doc beating the Devil and from then on, he’d be called Doc.
For whatever reason, I didn’t want to just do a fiddle tune with Billy, and then, he and I also have a whole live duets record, so I didn’t want to be redundant, either. We are big fans of heavy metal music, and we talked about it a lot, but never really played much with each other. I thought OK, here’s this Devil Went Down to Deep Gap concept, where we could at least start out with acoustic guitars and some twin guitar passages and take solos, but when the Devil does his thing, that’s where he and I would go into metal.”
With Billy and Bryan sharing verses, Sutton figured he needed one more character involved.
“As things grew with this, I thought, the way the story’s presented, I’m the narrator, and Billy plays the role of Arthel — Doc — and then who’s going to play the Devil?
Del McCoury! Why not? And he was game to do it.”
So they headed into the studio with Sam Bush on mandolin and T. Michael Coleman on bass, Doc’s old band mate, and Jerry Roe on drums.
With the track complete and the single nearing release, Bryan had another thought.
“I kept thinking about having it just as a song to be released. It didn’t seem like enough! So, I found Pat Bradley, a great animator in Virginia, who agreed to do his thing with the song. So there’s a whole cartoon animation that goes along with the song now, and it’s been really fun just to see it come together.”
If there are boxes to check, or a sweet spot in this beyond just being theatrical and kind of wild, it really is, at the end of the day, a Doc Watson tribute. In fact, when Billy and I were talking about it after listening to it at the end, he said, ‘you know, this is a gospel song! Like, c’mon, devil! I’ll show you!'”
It really is a hoot. Have a look/listen.
The Devil Went Down to Deep Gap is available now from popular download and streaming services online, and to radio programmers via AirPlay Direct.
