Raise Your Glass to 25 Years of David Lee Murphy’s ‘Dust On The Bottle’

Write what you know. It’s the time-honored advice handed down to all aspiring songwriters, particularly in the tunesmithing mecca of Music Row. David Lee Murphy can attest to the wisdom of that songwriting adage, going all the way back to his 1995 smash single, “Dust on the Bottle.” The young writer and brand-new artist recalled a colorful denizen from his Herrin, Illinois, hometown, and brewed up a No. 1 hit with a catchy, up-tempo tale inspired by this real-life character. “Dust on the Bottle” reached the top spot on October 28th, 1995, staying there for two weeks. Murphy, who wrote the song by himself, shared some recollections behind “Dust on the Bottle” as it marks its 25th anniversary.

The song kicks off like a Southern-based short story, introducing us to Creole Williams, the main character. Creole Williams lived down a dirt road/Made homemade wine like nobody I know, reads the opening verse, immediately capturing the listener’s imagination. “Creole was an old guy from my hometown,” Murphy explains to Sounds Like Nashville. “He did make homemade wine, but it was the kind you’d keep in a kitchen cabinet or something. It was not the finest wine,” Murphy adds with a gentle laugh, “but it got the job done. He was good friends with a cousin of mine, and that’s how I got to know him. I guess you could say that he was a real outdoorsy guy, who liked to go fishing and hunting. He was kind of a character. I think he always wore camo.”

The camo-sporting, amateur winemaker crossed Murphy’s mind as he was sitting in the kitchen of his home in Ashland City, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, sometime in 1994. Murphy had just begun cutting his debut album, Out With a Bang. “It was the morning of the second day recording the album,” Murphy recalls. “Out at the farm house, I had my guitar on the kitchen table. I started playing that opening chord passage and it sort of fell out from there. I had written the title ‘Dust on the Bottle’ on a notebook page and I would go back to it every now and then. For some reason, Creole popped into my head.” From there, the lyrics flowed like rapidly running water. “The story just took off,” Murphy remembers. “I think I had it written in about 15 minutes. It came out that fast.”

Murphy crafted the story of a young man who enlists Creole’s help in sparking some romantic fire for his Friday night date. Williams had just what the guy needed, a special wine sitting in his cobweb-draped cellar. That led to Murphy’s chorus, as Creole philosophically muses, There might be a little dust on the bottle/But don’t let it fool ya about what’s inside. “I called Tony Brown, who was producing my album, and played him the song,” Murphy continues. “He just loved it and said that we had to cut that.”

“Dust on the Bottle” was released in August of 1995, as the fourth single from Out With a Bang. The song rocked its way to No. 1 on October 28th, 1995, handing Murphy his first chart-topper as an artist and writer. Since that time, though, Murphy has written a slew of No. 1s for other artists, including “Living in Fast Forward” by Kenny Chesney and Jason Aldean’s “Big Green Tractor.” Murphy topped the charts again in 2017 with “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright,” a duet with Chesney.

Murphy watched the chart ascension of “Dust on the Bottle” with the zeal of an investor following a hot stock. There have been tales of artists who did not want to know a single’s progress, for fear of jinxing its success, but don’t count Murphy in that group. “I did keep up with it,” Murphy concedes wholeheartedly. “I had done a lot of road work promoting [previous single] ‘Party Crowd,’ and it was so great to see ‘Dust on the Bottle’ take off when it did.” Murphy was in road warrior mode when he got the official news that “Dust on the Bottle” had reached the promised land of No. 1 on the charts.

“We were on the bus from a gig in Texas,” Murphy remembers. “We knew we were getting close [to No. 1], so we wanted to call the label guy. It was a Sunday night. I think we were maybe in Oklahoma City, somewhere like that. Of course, nobody had cell phones at the time so we had to pull in to a truck stop and called from there. And that’s when we found out.” Murphy and his bandmates didn’t wait until they returned to Nashville to celebrate. “We had some coffee at the truck stop and went back on the bus,” he says. “Then we partied all the way home.”

Now, 25 years down the road, “Dust on the Bottle,” as a key lyric in the chorus suggests, has grown “sweeter with time.” It’s a staple of honky tonk acts around the country, and the familiar tune occasionally pops up on radio stations that air the classics. Amazingly, it still pulls in more than a million streams per week. It’s also a favorite of many current artists, including Kenny Chesney. The superstar has often invited Murphy to the stage at his concerts for a “Dust on the Bottle” duet, to rousing fan reaction. Chesney once commented that “Dust on the Bottle” stood as a soundtrack memory for an entire generation of listeners, noting that, “I saw it firsthand on stage with David Lee for two years. Every person, no matter their age, knew every word because it was part of the fabric of their lives.”

The song holds up, Murphy feels, because it adheres to the time-honored country tradition of pure storytelling. “I think the story and the guitar-driven passage there at the beginning catches people’s attention,” he says. “We used a raw, sparse production, and that helped the story stand out.” Then, there’s that memorable Creole Williams character, who’s not described in great detail but yet we can paint a vivid picture of him in our minds. “When I was writing the song, he kind of reminded me of Curtis Loew, from the Lynyrd Skynyrd song [‘The Ballad of Curtis Loew’],” Murphy says. “I have had people say that to me as well. It’s cool that people have their own ideas of who Creole is, or how old he might be, or what he looks like.”

“Dust on the Bottle” remains a track that Murphy can reflect on with a measure of pride and exuberant joy. “It makes me feel good that people still love it,” Murphy says. “It has been a blessing for me. I never get tired of singing it.” With an easygoing laugh, Murphy adds, “I just wish they were all that easy.”