By Rachel Sandler
Mike Greenly was born in Texas, grew up in South Carolina and currently lives in New York. Yet he is the brains behind the lyrics to “Our Great Virginia,” one of Virginia’s two new state songs, both of which were approved by the General Assembly earlier this year.
The original state song, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” was retired in 1997 due to what are widely considered to be racist lyrics. Virginia has been without a state song since.
How did a man who has never lived in Virginia end up writing the lyrics to the Virginia state song? It all, Greenly says, starts with James “Bud” Robertson, a professor of history at Virginia Tech.
Known for his Civil War expertise and downright passion for the state of Virginia, Bud Robertson made it a personal priority to find a new state song. “He wanted, while he was still on this Earth, to make a state song happen,” Greenly says. “I guess he got tired of waiting and wanted to leave as a part of his legacy a song.”
Robertson already had the music in mind: a slow ballad from the 1800s called “Shenandoah.” All he needed was someone to write the lyrics.
A song plugger, someone who connects songwriters to composers/producers, based in Nashville ended up with the music and the task of finding someone to write the lyrics. He had one person in mind for the job, an experienced lyricist and speechwriter from New York: Mike Greenly. “My first thought, honestly, was that Shenandoah was not necessarily the easiest word to rhyme to.”
When Greenly and Robertson talked about the song, two things were abundantly clear to Greenly. First, Virginians are loyal to their state—“maybe Texas equals them,” he says. Second, through talking with Robertson, who “has Virginia in his pores,” and online research, he could get the imagery and background needed to write the lyrics which reference specific locations and images in the state despite never having lived in Virginia.
“We wanted the song to be very inclusive, geographically, culturally and socially,” Greenly says.
After talking with Robertson and researching on his own, Greenly wrote his first lyric to what would later be called “Our Great Virginia” in January 2014.
Around a year later, three other songs were contenders in the General Assembly debate. After some minor controversy and changing the word “heartland” to “birthplace,” the song was approved by the Virginia legislature and Gov. Terry McAuliffe at the end of March. The law making “Our Great Virginia” and “Sweet Virginia Breeze” the two official state songs took effect on July 1.
