Down the Road is the twenty-ninth studio album by Northern Irish singer Van Morrison (see 2002 in music). The album has a nostalgic tone, lyrically and musically, and its arrangements mix R&B and blues with country and folk, and with a few exceptions, like "Georgia on My Mind," the music is most often rooted in 1950s and early 1960s popular music. The album charted at #6 in the UK and #26 in the US, while consistently charting in the top 20 across Europe. Recording The album was originally recorded with singer and pianist Linda Gail Lewis within a month of the release of You Win Again. It was originally entitled Choppin' Wood, but Morrison re-recorded it, removing Linda Gail Lewis' contributions to the songs and deleting other songs from the album. Morrison recorded another nine songs to the album in late 2001 and retitled it Down the Road. The songs that were included were increased from an original ten to fifteen tracks and a lengthy sixty-seven minutes. One of the original songs, "Just Like Greta", that was not included on the album would appear on Morrison's 2005 release Magic Time, without a rerecording. It was finished by year's end in 2001 and released after numerous delays. Composition The songs on the album lean towards the blues the singer listened to in his youth. The title track was originally entitled "Down the Road I Go" and was first recorded in 1981 with guitarist Mark Knopfler. The song was then re-recorded with Linda Gail Lewis in November 2000 with additional lyrics. "Choppin' Wood" is a tribute to the singer's father, George Morrison, who had died suddenly from a heart attack more than a decade earlier. In "The Beauty of the Days Gone By", Morrison attempts to come to terms with approaching old age. In the song "Whatever Happened to P.J. Proby?" Morrison refers to musicians P. J. Proby and Scott Walker and makes political references to Screaming Lord Sutch, the former leader of the British Monster Raving Loony Party, who died in 1999. In the second verse of the song Morrison claims that he Don't have no frame of reference no more Not even Screaming Lord Sutch Without him now there's no Raving Loony Party Nowadays I guess there's not much Reception Down the Road was commercially and critically one of Morrison's most successful albums. It charted higher in the U.S. than