“Stones in the Road” by Mary Chapin Carpenter

"Stones in the Road" is the title track of Mary Chapin Carpenter's fifth studio album, which Columbia released in October 1994, and it's a song she had already given away once: she pitched it to Joan Baez when the two shared a concert bill, and Baez cut it first, on 1992's Play Me Backwards, before Carpenter recorded it herself. It's a song that looks back with a nostalgic eye, and the 1995 film Bye Bye Love put it on the big screen too.

She wrote it alone and produced it with John Jennings, the two of them on acoustic guitars, and the band around them is stacked: Steuart Smith on electric guitar, Benmont Tench on Hammond organ and piano, Don Dixon on bass and Kenny Aronoff on drums. Bob Dawson recorded and mixed it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.