A poignant look at the country music legend’s past.
We lost David Allan Coe back on April 29 at the age of 89, but last month we got one final album from the outlaw country icon.
The 11-track project, A Million Reasons, was recorded all the way back in 2017 before being shelved for nearly a decade. The album was acquired in 2022 by Coe’s former co-manager, Ken Madson, who set out to finish it for an eventual commercial release.
Of course, the album didn’t end up getting released during Coe’s lifetime, but Madson felt it important to finish it anyways and ultimately get it to Coe’s fans:
“A few years ago, I was able to acquire the master recordings from Average Joes Entertainment. After David’s passing earlier this year, finishing what we started and sharing what has now become his final completed studio album has felt more important than ever.
When I began working with David Allan Coe in 2017 to record this album, my goal was to capture his voice and musical legacy in the best way possible. The project ultimately took a different path than we anticipated, but I remained committed to seeing the recordings completed and made available to his fans.”
The title track was inspired by Coe’s 2015 legal troubles that saw him plead guilty to obstruction and ordered to pay $450k in unpaid taxes.
Whiskey Riff spoke with the song’s co-writer, Coe’s longtime friend and former co-manager, about the inspiration to write “A Million Reasons” during a difficult time in the country legend’s life:
“The judge declared him guilty and he owed about a million dollars to the IRS. They weren’t going to put him in prison because he was still working, and because of his age, and they wanted to start garnishing his wages and things. So I called [co-writer] Shane [Grove] to come pick us up, and he said, ‘Well, what what happened?’
I said, ‘Well, he’s guilty. He owes a million dollars,’ and Shane kind of came up with the line, ‘I’ve got a million reasons to give up, but you’re the reason that I don’t.'”
Wade says that Coe appreciated the line, and the group decided to turn it into a song:
“David liked it because, what is the reason that you don’t give up? Is it God? Is it Jesus? Is it your woman? Is it your friends? Is it your children? Is it your hobbies and passions? The song, he talks about his friends, he talks about his love, he talks about whatever, but it could be for anyone when you face a time to give up, what do you what keeps you going? What’s the reason that you don’t give up when you have a million reasons to give up? And in his case, it was a million-dollar reason to give up.”
And when it came time to release the song as the album’s title tracks, Coe’s team wanted a music video to go with it.
Of course by the time the song finally saw the light of day, Coe had unfortunately passed away. But they wanted to release more than a lyric video for the poignant track, so they turned to some unreleased footage that had previously been recorded.
The video features Coe returning to his old prison cell at the Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio, the same institution where he had been incarcerated from 1963-1967. And as Wade recalls, the footage was originally recorded for another music video:
“He did a video with the Moonshine Bandits … and went to we find his cell, and they did a reimagination of “Take This Job and Shove It.” And Ken that owns the album was managing the Moonshine Bandits at the time and they became friends with David, and they had kind of the same crossover audience so we shot this video.”
It was footage from that visit that eventually became the powerful video for the new single. But as Wade points out, the old footage turned out to be eerily fitting for the poignant song:
“The video for ‘A Million Reasons’ was not shot as the video for ‘A Million Reasons.’ We basically just went in and took whatever we could find, basically scraps of stuff, and put it together to make a music video, and it kind of it kind of works really well.
When you watch the video, I think you’ll be like, ‘Hey, that that’s kind of supposed to be that way.'”
While Coe wasn’t around to see the finished product, his team was proud of how it turned out:
“We felt like a real video would would be more impactful. We called it making chicken salad out of chicken sh-t.”
The video will officially be released on Friday, but we’re incredibly excited to be able to bring you the first look at David Allan Coe’s final music video.
This one hits hard.
