Song Stories - "Roll With It"

Tony and Christina Lane, Stacie and David Lee

Easton Corbin’s current single, “Roll With It,” which presently sits at No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot Country Chart, is in many ways a song whose time has come. Two of the song’s three writers, David Lee and Tony Lane, recently sat down with CountryHound to talk about the story behind the song.
 
As Lee and Lane tell it, there are three main messages to the feel-good song “Roll With It.” The first is sometimes you just have to forget about all your troubles with everyday life and take off to somewhere like the lake or beach. The second message is that even if you don’t have money you should still do whatever you can to relax.  And the third message is, as Lane puts it, “I think with your wife you do get in a rut romantically and you kind of growl at each other. So sometimes you take a little getaway and rekindle things and look at it differently.” Lee summed up the message like this, “To me it’s just a message of forget all your troubles, and don’t be afraid to just take off sometimes and go to the lake or whatever you want to do and just go with what happens.”
 
Lee, Lane and Johnny Park actually wrote “Roll With It” about 10 years ago. They were writing it for an album Park was to release, but as Lee put it, “Immediately during the course of writing the song, it became something we all thought would be good for George Strait.” Strait didn’t cut it, however the song was almost released once before on an album by Kevin Denny.  Due to label problems, that album never came out. Recently, it was picked up by Easton Corbin. Maybe it is a song whose time has come because more people are lacking on money these days, but not on everyday problems, so it takes them to a place they want to go.
 
Lee and Lane say the song is not based on any one particular experience, though Lee said he did remember one time he and his wife, with just $20-$30 in their pocket, took off for the beach in Florida. Lee said his wife had never seen the beach, so he wanted to take her. They planned to just sleep on the beach. The first day there, they sunburned pretty bad. Then that night, as they bedded down on the beach, the sky broke open with rain and they were drenched. They ended up driving back home wet, sandy and sunburned.
 
One thing the pair of hit writers like about the song is that they think it does a very good job of painting a picture of what “Roll With It” is like. As Lee said, “With every song we write, we try to paint pictures. That song shows it more than says it.” Verses like “So open up that bag of pig skins you bought at the Exxon Station the last time we stopped and you kick back baby and dance in your socks on the windshield to some radio rock” paint it pretty well.
 
Though this is Johnny Park’s biggest single to date, both David Lee and Tony Lane have several No. 1 hits between them and a Grammy nomination. The pair co-wrote No. 1 hits “Letters From Home” by John Michael Montgomery, “I Wanna Feel Somethin’” by Trace Adkins and the Grammy-nominated Faith Hill/Tim McGraw hit, “I Need You”. Tony Lane’s other  No. 1’s include Lee Ann Womack’s “A Little Past Little Rock” and “Run” by George Strait. David Lee’s No. 1’s include “19 Somethin’” by Mark Wills and “Lucky Man” by Montgomery Gentry.
 
Both writers admitted it was a little hard to remember all the particulars of writing the song with Park since it was so long ago. Then again, they didn’t seem too surprised that after all this time it was cut by an artist and is a big success. As Lee said, “So it shows you there’s some gems in those catalogs that people are overlooking.”
 
I guess that’s what happens sometimes when you just “Roll With It” and let life come to you; good things come your way.

 
“Roll With It” Lyrics
 
I got my old guitar and some fishin' poles
So baby, fill that cooler full of something cold
Don't ask, just pack and we'll hit the road runnin'
Honey, what do you say?

I got just enough money and just enough gas
So pick a place on the map we can get to fast
Where the white, sandy beach meets water like glass
And if the tide carries us away

Baby, we'll roll with it
Won't think about it too much
Baby, let's just go with it
And get out of this ordinary everyday rut

And we get swept away by one of those perfect days
When the sun is sinkin' low at dusk
And wind up a little deeper in love
Baby, let's roll with it

We get so caught up in catchin' up
Tryin' to pay the rent, tryin' to make a buck
That don't leave much time for time for us
And ain't life too short for that?

So open up that bag of pig skins you bought
At the Exxon station the last time we stopped
And you kick back, baby, and dance in your socks
On the windshield to some radio rock

And we'll roll with it
Won't think about it too much
Baby, let's just go with it
And get out of this ordinary everyday rut

And we get swept away by one of those perfect days
When the sun is sinkin' low at dusk
And wind up a little deeper in love

Baby, we'll roll with it
Won't think about it too much
Sometimes you gotta go with it
Get out of this ordinary everyday rut

And it won't be no thing if it starts to rain
And we have to wait it out in the truck
Might wind up a little deeper in love
So, baby let's roll with it
Baby, let's roll with it

Baby, we'll roll with it
Baby, we'll roll with it