Me And You And A Dog Named Boo

Album

Introducing Lobo

Label

Big Tree Records

Genre

Soft Rock

Composer(s)

Kent LaVoie

Entered Chart

Apr 3, 1971

Peak Date

May 15, 1971

Released

March 1971

Recorded

Electric Lady Studios

Catalog #

Big Tree 112 A

B-Side

Walk Away From It All

This song is about two hippies and a dog taking a cross-country road trip in an old car that runs poorly. The protagonists of the song get mired in the Georgia clay, steal food from a farmer and work to pay it off, and end up living in Los Angeles, but the old car makes them want to hit the road again. Judging from my experience with classic cars, the 1946-55 Kaiser automobile runs poorly and fits into the time frame of the song. >> Lobo is singer/songwriter Roland Kent LaVoie. Lobo means "Wolf" in Spanish. >> Apparently, many people mistakenly call this "You And Me And A Dog Named Boo," even though it messes up the rhyme. Funnily enough, Lobo tried out the "You And Me" title first (sans Boo), but he couldn't make it work. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place when his German shepherd, Boo, ran into the room and sparked his imagination. Lobo told the story in a 2013 interview: "I was working on several songs, including a tune about traveling around the country with this girl, and I was trying to rhyme 'you and me.' Now 'me and you' would have been easier, but I was trying to do it with proper grammar. I couldn't find anything to rhyme that fit what I wanted to say in the song. Finally, after I got back home to Florida, I decided to turn the phrase around to 'me and you.' I was thinking about it, sitting in a room that had a big sliding glass door overlooking the back yard. My big German shepherd dog: Boo, came running around the corner and looked in at me. I said: 'Well, now, that's kinda freaky. How about putting 'a dog named Boo' into the song?' That's literally how it came about. All of a sudden the song really started coming together. I hadn't been to any of the places mentioned in the song except Georgia, but I just kept putting in places that sounded far away like Minneapolis and LA." This was LaVoie's debut single under the Lobo moniker. He issued a string of hits throughout the '70s, including two more Top 10 singles: "I'd Love You To Want Me" and "Don't Expect Me To Be Your Friend." This was used in the TV shows Big Love ("Winter" - 2011) and Veronica Mars ("M.A.D." - 2005).

I remember to this day
The bright red Georgia clay
And how it stuck to the tires
After the summer rain
Will power made that old car go
A woman's mind told me that so
Oh how I wish
We were back on the road again

Me and you and a dog named boo
Travelin' and livin' off the land
Me and you and a dog named boo
How I love being a free man

I can still recall
The wheat fields of St. Paul
And the morning we got caught
Robbing from an old hen
Old McDonald he made us work
But then he paid us for what it was worth
Another tank of gas
And back on the road again

I'll never forget the day
We motored stately into big L.A.
The lights of the city put settlin'
Down in my brain
Though it's only been a month or so
That old car's buggin' us to go
We've gotta get away and get back on
The road again