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The story behind … Hayes Carll’s ‘She Left Me for Jesus’
‘(Co-writer) Brian Keene brought that initially. I thought the idea about beating up Jesus - just the idea without anything behind it - was a little heavy handed. So, we went about finding the context of the (narrator) mistaking his girlfriend’s newfound religion for her having an affair. We came up with some of the mistakes that can be made when a red-blooded country boy sees a longhaired, sandal wearing, pacifist Jew walking around. We thought about what his reaction would be if he thought (that guy) was sleeping with his girlfriend.
‘I did get a lot of grief over it. But I was always of the mindset that if people didn’t get what I was trying to say, there wasn’t much hope for them and me anyway. So, it didn’t bother me too much. It did bother me when people thought I was anti-Semitic or anti-Christian because of the lyrics. I thought it was pretty clear that I wasn’t poking fun at the religion but at the redneck who had a problem with these things. I looked at it like if (those listeners) didn’t get it, I wasn’t going to be able to explain it to them. I thought I did a fairly good job of breaking it down in the first place.
‘It was nice to get the (Americana Music Association) award, but it’s weird. You write a bunch of songs and really put your heart into them and have a really emotional connection to the stuff. Then a tongue-in-cheek satire you write in an hour and a half is the one you get the most recognition and notoriety for. It got a second wind when we cut that record, but I never thought it’d get the life that it did. It was cool, though, because I was in the UK and listened to the award show online. That was fun. Got a nice little plaque for it.’
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