Brother, Do You Know the Road?

"Brother, Do You Know the Road?" was first released as a standalone digital single by Merge Records (MRG526) on May 14, 2014, a single track at 6:09 with no B-side, priced at 99 cents according to a blog of May 18. It was then track three of the EP Southern Grammar (February 3, 2015). It is not on any full-length album; God Is in the TV relays M.C. Taylor's view that it is something of an orphan. M.C. Taylor writes the band's songs, but the writer credit was not verified in a source we read. Taylor told Coke Machine Glow it was recorded in one take in a house in North Carolina; the review's last summer would be 2014, which conflicts with the single's May release, so the date is unresolved, and a house in Oxford, North Carolina named in a summary of another source is unconfirmed.

Coke Machine Glow hears a slow, swinging spiritual with hymn-like call and response, trembling organ and swampy leads, about six minutes long, comparable to a Flannery O'Connor story and reflecting on a troubled past. The band has played it since 2012, sort of as a tune-up song as the band comes on the stage, Taylor said. MusicBrainz lists live recordings from the Hopscotch festival in Raleigh on September 7, 2012, the Parish in Austin on October 18, 2016 (9:59, on Parker's Picks Vol. 1, March 29, 2017), the 2020 School Daze (8:07), the Pour House in Charleston on December 11, 2021 (8:53, on Greetings From Charleston!) and EartH in London on June 15, 2022 (6:59, on A Midsummer Night's Dream: Live at EartH Hackney, February 3, 2023). It was also on the Merge Spring-Summer Sampler of 2015.

Our upload, from the band's Topic channel, is the studio recording of 6:09 or 6:10. We found no video, chart entry, covers or samples.