The story behind Big & Rich’s ‘Lost In This Moment’

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Big & Rich’s 2007 country chart-topper “Lost In This Moment” is “the greatest modern wedding song,” according to Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International.

It was also, ironically, written by two “wild and crazy bachelors” – John Rich and Keith Anderson – along with Rich’s former seventh grade basketball coach (and future country hitmaker) Rodney Clawson.

All three writers told the Story Behind the Song to Herbison in separate conversations.

Bart Herbison: I rarely do this, John, but I want to read the first few lines. I want to read them because I want to make sure I don’t make a mistake. “I see your mama, and the candles and tears and roses/ I see your daddy…” I’m already getting choked up! “…walk his daughter down the aisle/ I feel my knees start to tremble as I tell the preacher/ Don’t she look beautiful?”

That has got to be the greatest modern wedding song.

John Rich: I appreciate it. Every night we do a concert, there’s multiple couples that will come up and say – matter of fact, it’s actually even funnier. They’ll say, “We met in a bar, listening to ‘Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy,’ and we walked down the aisle to ‘Lost in this Moment.’ ”

BH: Two of our lifelong mates, Keith Anderson and Rodney Clawson (were your) co-writers. Did this begin as a wedding song?

JR: Well, what’s funny is me and Keith were the wild, crazy bachelors at the time. Now, Rodney had been married. So he was the only one who had any experience whatsoever and (knew) what a wedding would be like, but there is a tactic that a songwriter can use. It’s being a voyeur. It’s not unlike being an actor. So you would step into somebody else’s shoes, all the way into it, and you see what they see, smell what they smell, feel what they feel, hear what they hear. And if you can tap into that, and really channel that and get it onto the page, you don’t have to be a guy that got married before. You know, Johnny

Cash talked about a lot of criminal activity that he really never engaged in. But he stepped into the shoes of a criminal, right? And so he would look at it from that point of view. The song came from that spot.

BH: Whose idea (was it), and where did it take off from?

JR: I started it. This is when I was still living in a little apartment over here, off Acklen Avenue. Rodney Clawson was driving a thousand miles each direction once a month from his farm out in Gruber, Texas, in the Panhandle, close to where I’m from. He would stay in my spare bedroom.

BH: Now, let’s go back a little further. You knew each other.

JR: I’m in seventh grade, going to a little school in Amarillo, Texas. And this young guy, he’s about 21, becomes our basketball coach. And he’s this real laid back kind of guy... and I’m like, “How good could this coach be? He has no energy whatsoever.” But he was a great coach, very patient and really a good athlete.... Well, down the road, (Rich’s former band) Lonestar got a record deal. And I still have to call him coach to this day.

We got signed in ‘94. So we had a concert that got booked in Amarillo in about 95…. So he came to the show. And after the show, he hands me a cassette with lyrics wrapped around it with a rubber band. He hands it to me. I said, “What’s that?” He goes, “Oh, man, they probably suck. But you know, sometimes when I’m out on the tractor, I’ll write some songs and this and that.…” So I got on the tour bus, popped it in the cassette deck and listen, I went “good God.” I called him right away. I said, “Coach, the songs are really legit. They’re good. You should come to Nashville. I’ll start introducing you to people.” So for many years, 1,000 miles to Nashville, 1,000 miles back.

Keith Anderson: I met John (when) he came out to one of my shows with a mutual friend of ours, a girl named Amber Dotson who used to be on Capitol Records. And we just hit it off. We talked afterwards, hung out, and we were writing the next week…. John and I, and Rodney, we were all single, and we were running hard. I mean, we would either

SUBMITTED John Rich, right, speaks with Bart Herbison about songwriting.