About September 24, 2012, news outlets starting reporting about an incident at a University of Tennessee fraternity party involving a young man going to the hospital after receiving a wine enema. As more reports came out, I started investigating about this practice that I had never heard of. As I read more about it, I decided that this might be a subject for a novelty song. I realized that this story wouldn’t be in the new that long so I should probably move quickly. I was also traveling out of town the next week. I really wanted to write the song, record it and make a music video before I left town on October 1.
The title was the first thing that came, “Tennessee Boxed Wine Enema”. The only word that I could think of that rhymed with enema was cinema. I quickly came up with a few lyrics that included cinema but I couldn’t go anywhere with it. The main thing that came from this was an idea for the tune. October 1 was closing in and I didn’t even have a song. I resolved to complete the lyrics while I was on the road.
I was scheduled to be on the road for most of the week of October 1. I would be driving from Jackson, TN to Indianapolis, spending the night there, flying to Minneapolis, spend the night there, then back to Indianapolis for one more night before I drove home. Lots of evenings in hotel rooms proved to be a good opportunity for writing.
Soon I decided that using the word cinema had led me down a dead end path with the lyrics. Two decisions helped move the writing process along. First, the song had to approach the topic with the same curiosity that I had for the subject when I started researching it after I heard the news reports. I had to ask the same questions that I had asked then. That also meant that I got rid of the lyrics that I had already written. The only thing I kept was the title. Second, I realized that “enema” would be virtually impossible to rhyme. I decided to work with near rhymes and forced rhymes. I thought this would add to the humor that I was looking for. While most of the country was watching presidential debates, I was following up on these ideas and writing my hit song.
When I got home from my trip, the lyrics were basically complete. When I sat down with my guitar, I went through to make sure that my phrasing worked. As usual, I did tweak the words in a few places. On Saturday, October 6, I started recording. By Monday, October 8, I had the song ready to release. But I wanted to have a video to accompany it. I talked to my son about ideas for the video. On Wednesday evening, we started putting those ideas on video. My wife also helped with staging. Those are her hands pouring up the glassing of wine in the video. On Thursday, October 11, my son showed me a first draft of the video. We decided that it needed a couple of things. First, we filmed the scene with the garden hose and added it. Second, we added more dancing. Later that evening, we posted the video. Four days later, I released it as an mp3 single.