One of Will’s timeless classics from his debut album that he still played at his most recent performances, many years later. Here’s how he introduced his new song at the Chicago House in 1989, 2 years before recording it.
“Hung out at a songwriter’s group about, oh, I don’t know, two months ago. And we’d go in with these Nashville executives and they’d be, like, ‘Well, boys, you’ve got about 3, 4 minutes each.’
And you got praised if you came up with a really snazzy hook line, you know, and the goal was to come up with something…it’d be hard to match it…it’d be really hard to match it, but if you could just get close to the level of ‘Every time you throw dirt on her, you lose a little ground.’
So I worked on something that was really just right there in mainstream, you know, to make…to show them that, hey, I’ll compromise, I’ll play the game. I’m in this thing. So, I think I finally wrote me a country & western hit. I’m kinda embarrassed because I haven’t played it for anyone yet and I want this on the radio. It goes something like this anyway…”
The angels take a coffee break at night.
We see the tips of their cigarettes shining bright.
We call them “stars.”
They call that a joke.
And the clouds, they are Holy Smoke.
The angels take a coffee break at night.
They’re tired of the rigid, the frigid, the morally right.
I cause a commotion.
I’ve got ‘em figured out.
I’ve got a notion that that’s what they gossip about.
The angels, they take a coffee break at night.
They pull out their fiddles when they get to feeling uptight.
They’re tuned to our key.
Let’s dance all night long.
It’s plain to see that the angels are playing our song.
They’re playing our song…
Years after its debut, Will kept playing this song
(Richard Bowden on fiddle)
Buller's back porch 