1982 · Behind the Songs
Twenty years with Capitol behind him, a new label in front of him, and a David Pomeranz song about going home.
In September 1982, Glen Campbell did something he had not done in twenty years: he released an album on a label other than Capitol. Old Home Town was his thirty-ninth studio album and his first for Atlantic Records, produced by Jerry Fuller and recorded at Footprint Sound Studio in Sherman Oaks, California. The title track, written by David Pomeranz, ran three minutes and thirty-eight seconds and was released as a single, climbing to No. 44 on the US Country chart. The album reached No. 33 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, and AllMusic would later give it three and a half stars out of five. It was not a comeback and it was not a farewell. It was something quieter: a man in his mid-forties, on a new label, singing about the oldest subject there is — home.
Twenty years on Capitol
To understand what Old Home Town meant, you have to understand what Capitol meant. Campbell had been with Capitol for two decades — the label of “Gentle on My Mind,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” “Rhinestone Cowboy,” and “Southern Nights.” Twenty years, dozens of albums, millions of records. Leaving Capitol for Atlantic in 1982 was not a tantrum; it was a veteran artist looking for a new room to play in. Jerry Fuller, the producer, understood the assignment: don’t reinvent Glen Campbell, just give him good songs and get out of the way.
The title track
David Pomeranz wrote “Old Home Town” — Pomeranz, the singer-songwriter behind “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again,” a man who understood big, plainspoken emotion. The song is exactly what its title promises: a meditation on returning to the place that made you, finding it changed and unchanged at once. At 3:38 it was the album’s emotional center and its title track, released as a single in 1982. It peaked at No. 44 on the US Country chart — a modest showing, the kind of chart position that tells you radio had moved on to younger voices. But chart positions are not the whole story of a song like this. Some records are written for the charts. “Old Home Town” was written for the rearview mirror.
The company on the album
Old Home Town was not a one-song record. Its other singles told their own stories: “I Love How You Love Me,” the Barry Mann and Larry Kolber classic, reached No. 17 on the country chart and No. 35 on Adult Contemporary in 1982 — proof that Campbell could still take a great old song and make it his own. “On the Wings of My Victory,” written by Bob Corbin, followed in 1983 and reached No. 85. The album itself climbed to No. 33 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. And the players were first-call: Kim Darigan on bass, Craig Fall on guitars, Steve Hardin on keyboards and harmonica, Carl Jackson on acoustic guitar, fiddle, and banjo, T.J. Kuenster on keyboards and synthesizer, Steve Turner on drums, Larry Muhoberac on keyboards and string arrangements — and Campbell himself on vocals, acoustic guitar, and, inevitably, bagpipes.
Going home, again
There is a long tradition of home-town songs in country music, and Campbell had earned the right to sing one. He was the farm boy who became the most televised face in country music, and by 1982 he had been gone from home longer than he had ever lived there. “Old Home Town” does not pretend the return is simple — the best home-town songs never do. The houses are smaller, the names on the mailboxes have changed, and the person who left is not the person coming back. Pomeranz’s song gives Campbell room to sing all of that without spelling it out, and Campbell, who had nothing left to prove, sings it like a man reading his own mail.
What to listen for
Listen for the unhurried confidence. Campbell was in his mid-forties when he cut Old Home Town, and he sings the title track like a man who has stopped auditioning. Listen for Carl Jackson’s fiddle and banjo, grounding the Atlantic sessions in something older than any label. Listen for Larry Muhoberac’s string arrangements, giving the record its soft glow. And listen for the bagpipes — Campbell’s lifelong signature oddity, the instrument that said the farm boy was still in there somewhere. “Old Home Town” peaked at No. 44, and in a just world it would have done better. But the song was never really competing with the hits of 1982. It was competing with memory. Memory won.