About The Song
“Long Haired Country Boy” is a song by American music group Charlie Daniels Band and released on their 1974 album Fire on the Mountain. It was first released as a single in April, 1975 and was re-released as a single in January, 1980. In 2019, it was covered by Cody Johnson on his album, Ain’t Nothin’ to It. The song was written solely by Charlie Daniels.
This song, about a guy with a very passive attitude who lies around all day doing nothing, was originally written very tongue-in-cheek. Because it contained references to drugs and drinking, however, Charlie Daniels felt it was inappropriate to play it during live shows for several years. In a Songfacts interview with Daniels, he said, “Things have gotten so serious and it’s such a big problem with drugs and alcohol with kids, and it just went against my Christian feelings to actually do anything that somebody could construe with promoting that lifestyle, or those things, the alcohol and drugs.”
It wasn’t until many years later that he decided to change some of the words so he felt he could begin playing it in his live shows again. “The song was such a big part of our repertoire and was always just a popular song for us to do. And people kept wanting it, so I changed ‘I get stoned in the morning, I get drunk in the afternoon’ to ‘I get up in the morning, I get down in the afternoon,’ which means the same thing. I wish I had done that to start with.”
It wasn’t necessarily from personal experience that Daniels wrote this song, rather from the general way he was feeling at the time. Daniels says the song’s message is tolerance. “If you don’t like me, we don’t need to have any trouble, we don’t need to be going upside each other’s head or anything,” he told Songfacts. “Just leave me alone. Just walk around me. Maybe you don’t like the way my hair looks, maybe you don’t like the way I eat my soup, or whatever it is that you don’t like about me, it doesn’t make any difference to me. I don’t care. If you don’t like me it’s okay. Maybe I don’t like you either, but I’m not going to bother with you. Just walk around me, go to the other side of the street, or I go to the other side of the street, and let’s just co-exist here. There’s no need to have problems. You may mentally and intellectually disagree with people, but you don’t have to be nasty about it. You certainly don’t have to be physical about it. So if you don’t like me, it’s okay, just leave me alone. And that’s what the song’s about.”
Video
Lyrics
People say I ain’t no good
And I’m crazy as a loon
‘Cause I get stoned in the morning
I get drunk in the afternoon
I’m kinda like my old blue tick hound
I like to lay around in the shade
I ain’t got no money
But I damn sure got it madeAnd I ain’t asking nobody for nothin’
If I can’t get it on my own
If you don’t like the way I’m livin’
Just leave this long haired country boy aloneWell I’ve seen a preacher man talking on TV
He was puttin’ down rock ‘n’ roll
He wants me to send a donation
‘Cause he’s worried about my soul
He said Jesus walked on the water
And y’all know this is true
Well sometimes I think that old preacher man
Should like to do a little walking too‘Cause I ain’t asking nobody for nothin’
Yeah, if I can’t get it on my own
Yeah, if you don’t like the way I’m livin’
Just leave this long haired country boy alone
Oh, here it goesWell I said the poor girl wants to marry
And the rich girl wants to flirt
The rich boys went off to college
And all of us poor boys came to work
The drunkard wants another drink of wine
And the politician wants your vote
But me, I don’t want much of nothin’ at all
But I will take another toke‘Cause I ain’t asking nobody for nothin’
Yeah, if I can’t get it on my own
Yeah, if you don’t like the way I’m livin’
Just leave this long haired country boy alone
Well I said, I said
If you don’t like how I’m livin’
Just leave this long haired country boy aloneGet ’em boys