Noted Stories is a weekly podcast that explores the true stories behind the songs of artist and songwriter David Ray Skinner. Drawing from more than 50 years of songwriting, each 24–25 minute episode features two or three of Skinner's original songs, along with the inspiration, experiences, and moments that gave them life.
Send us Fan Mail I met Ran Coney in my first art class at Carson-Newman in 1970. I joked, “Like Coney Island?” He replied, “Yep, only without the roller coaster. Although I may be a hot dog.” Ran was a remarkable artist and songwriter, but he was also humble and kind. We quickly became friends—and friendly rivals. During Friday chapel, we passed notes and played word-chain games, linking phrases until they ended in nonsense. That game inspired this episode’s title: “We Ran Coney Island,” and ...
19 Oct 2026
Train Tracks
Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories, “Train Tracks,” features three songs inspired by my lifelong connection to railroads. Growing up in Nashville, I watched the Christmas parade from Union Station and received a Lionel train that I still run at Christmas. My Donelson elementary school’s annual L&N trip to Gallatin was another childhood highlight. Years later, I rode those same tracks north on my way to California. “The Burlington Line” is a true story song. In 1975, I met an e...
12 Oct 2026
Kinfolks
Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories, “Kinfolks,” features three “relatively true”songs. My love of stories and story songs began with my dad and his family in Jordan Springs, a rural Tennessee community without electricity. In the 1930s, battery-powered radios brought the Grand Ole Opry into my grandparents’ parlor. Neighbors gathered on Saturday nights to listen, sometimes joined by my great-uncle Tom, who played guitar despite having lost fingers in a dynamite accident. He taught...
5 Oct 2026
Auto Tunes
Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories features three car songs: one true, one partly true and one totally fictional. My parents once discovered that, as a toddler, I could correctly name the cars passing us on Sunday drives. Dad was a gifted mechanic, but I never inherited his skills. However, I did inherit his love of old cars—and later, when I was a college art major, I began dropping them into my watercolor paintings. Then, after college, I started writing songs about them. “Filmo...
28 Sept 2026
Artifacts and Fiction
Send us Fan Mail This episode of Noted Stories, “Artifacts and Fiction,” takes three events from the past and turns them into songs (with no small amount of creative license). In “Miss Mesopotamia,” a construction worker returns to school to become an archaeologist. On a secret dig in Iraq, his team uncovers what appears to be an ancient beauty pageant. He can’t resist telling the coworkers who once laughed at his ambitions—and one of them tips off a tabloid. “Warm Egyptian Nights” follows a ...
21 Sept 2026
Lone Star Stories
Send us Fan Mail This episode is called “Lone Star Stories,” and it’s all about Texas. The three songs include a fictional romance, a larger-than-life true story and a Texas-sized tall tale. I wrote the first song, “Café Texaco,” not long after I moved South from New York City. It’s a fictitious mariachi-flavored story about a Brooklyn kid who finds work at a Texas border-town gas station café. The second song, “Lookin’ Back at Luckenbach,” is the true story of an unforgettable trip in ...
14 Sept 2026
Bible Story Songs
Send us Fan Mail Growing up in Nashville during the 1950s and ’60s, I spent many Saturday afternoons watching Flatt & Scruggs. When they removed their hats, Lester would announce it was time for a “sacred number.” In that tradition, this episode of Noted Stories is called “Bible Story Songs.” One afternoon when I was visiting my dad and playing music together, he suggested that I write a song called “Writing in the Sand,” based on John 8. Jesus prevented a woman caught in adultery from be...
7 Sept 2026
All Thumbs
Send us Fan Mail “All Thumbs” is mostly about my brief and checkered career as a hitchhiker. I first tried hitchhiking during a college fraternity race to Atlanta. I managed to survive the experience so later, I dreamed of hitching to California and wrote the fictional first song of this episode, “California Itch.” In 1975, I finally traveled west by train, then hitchhiked throughout California. The reality was totally different than the song. The second song, “Another Man’s Shoes,” is a true...
31 Aug 2026
The Greatest Generation
Send us Fan Mail Growing up in Nashville during the Civil War centennial, I was fascinated by stories of soldiers and battles from another era. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was surrounded by another generation of heroes—men and women who had just returned from World War II. One of them was my father. Horace Edward Skinner joined the Army Air Corps after high school and became a B-24 tail gunner with the legendary 90th Bombardment Group—the Jolly Rogers. His crew called themsel...
24 Aug 2026
Uncivil War Stories
Send us Fan Mail The Civil War transformed America, and my fascination with it began as a child when my Uncle Ray gave me the book, “The Civil War in Middle Tennessee,” a reprint of a series by Ed Huddleston, originally published as four separate supplements in the Nashville Banner in the early 1960s to commemorate the war’s centennial. Growing up in Nashville and spending summers in Clarksville and Dover—near Fort Donelson—I became fascinated by the region’s overlooked Civil War history. By ...
17 Aug 2026
From Watermelon Evenings to Big Apple Days
Send us Fan Mail By the end of 1975, I’d graduated from college, lived in East Tennessee, worked for a newspaper, traveled to California, and returned to Nashville to write songs with Lee Owens. We recorded demos and performed at San Antonio’s River Festival, but by 1977, Nashville executives said our music wasn’t “country enough” and suggested New York or Los Angeles. Then my old friend Stephen Kling called from Manhattan with a job at Record World. A few weeks later, I packed my ’66 VW van ...
9 Aug 2026
Severe County Times
Send us Fan Mail I’ve always been fascinated by the Domino Effect—the idea that one small event can trigger a chain of unexpected consequences. This episode’s Noted Stories is a perfect example. The first domino fell in the spring of 1973 when I ran into my longtime mentor, artist (and church deacon) Max McWhorter, during Spring Break. When he asked about my summer plans, I told him I’d probably return to Opryland, where I had worked the previous year. Max introduced me to Stephen Kling, a ta...
3 Aug 2026
Contents Under Pressure
Send us Fan Mail During my first week at college, I met Paul Dunlap when he wandered into my dorm room while I was playing guitar. We quickly discovered that our voices blended well. A few nights later, Filmore Strunk heard us singing, added a perfect third harmony, and just like that, the three of us had something special. The next day, a freshman coordinator asked if my new band would perform in the freshman talent show. When she asked our name, I happened to read the warning on a can of sh...
27 Jul 2026
Good Old Nashville Days
Send us Fan Mail This week's episode features one true-story song and two tall tales—you can decide which one stretches the truth the most. The true story, "Nashville Summer Evenings," recalls my childhood in postwar Nashville. My parents, both World War II veterans, made sure my sister and I never forgot our Tennessee farming roots. Weekend trips to visit our grandparents, listening to the Grand Ole Opry on WSM, and exploring an abandoned railroad bed behind our house became memories that in...
20 Jul 2026
Crazy Ol' Frisco
Send us Fan Mail This week's Noted Stories features two songs inspired by one remarkable trip to California in 1975. While exploring San Francisco, I unexpectedly witnessed Sara Jane Moore's encounter with President Gerald Ford—an experience that inspired “Sara Jane.” Just days earlier, I had visited Berkeley on the very day Patty Hearst was captured. There I met a young man who invited me to a church gathering I never attended. Three years later, I learned what happened to him and his church...
14 Jul 2026
A Teen Voyager and an Elderly Bombmaker
Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the first episode of Noted Stories. I'm David Ray Skinner, and for more than fifty years I've written songs inspired by real people, real events, and real life. This podcast shares the stories behind those songs. The first song is "Robin." As a teenager, I read about sixteen-year-old Robin Lee Graham, who sailed alone around the world. Years later, while in college, I rediscovered his story in an old National Geographic magazine and wrote a song about his remarkabl...
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