chord in it. But basically that was a song that I had written that I didn’t think he was going to like because he doesn’t usually like romantic, warm and fuzzy loving songs, you know what I mean. He likes stuff with grit and real life matters. So I did co-write with him but not in the sense that we sat down and wrote a song together. He just kind of said, 'I think you should change this and do that;' and that’s sometimes what makes a song really the best that it can be." Sugar Hill Mountain: Mellencamp's reference to "cigarette trees" in the song's opening and closing lines came from "Big Rock Candy Mountain", a song written by Harry McClintock in 1928 and covered by Burl Ives circa the 1950s/early 1960s. Mellencamp explained to Sound and Vision: "I wrote a song for Meg [Ryan's] movie (Ithaca) that Carlene Carter sings on this record. The line is something like, 'Sugar Hill, Sugar Hill Mountain, where's there's bubblegum and cigarette trees' – and that's straight from a Burl Ives song! Well, I don't think it was 'bubblegum,' but it was 'cigarette trees'. So I thought, 'Yeah, I'll use that!'" Damascus Road: The only song on the album written solely by Carter, "Damascus Road" was conceived during the period when Sad Clowns & Hillbillies was going to contain original gospel tunes. "I ended up writing a song that ended up on the record that was intended to be on the gospel record, and that's 'Damascus Road,' and John just never got around to writing those songs", Carter told the Bend Bulletin. "But it came out just like it was supposed to. It's still got a very, very deep spiritual sense to it; the whole album does. It was an organic experience in that we found it easy to work in the studio together". "For me, ('Damascus Road') was very autobiographical in a lot of ways – I can't say it was about a certain moment or anything, but I certainly have been at those crossroads before in my life", Carter said. "… I've taken long periods of time off, and that really had to do with burning out and then getting really messed up in my personal life and my addiction stuff, and publicly just basically imploding. Then, to be able to come back and earn my way back into this