Song Snapshots is a column featuring the stories behind new and classic Southern Gospel songs.
One day, as Neil Enloe was reading his Bible, he came across the Acts 27 account of Paul’s shipwreck. Unlike other versions, the King James Version, which he describes as “the version of my life,” names the storm—”Euroclydon.”
He thought it was a strange word. “But,” he thought, “maybe I can build a song around that one word and tell the story of the shipwreck and how the same solution that Paul had can be ours, too. You always make the application in the last verse.” So he read and re-read the passage, putting the story in the first two verses and making the application in the third.
The Couriers’ classic lineup of Duane Nicholson (tenor), Enloe (lead), and Dave Kyllonen (bass) toured through this year as Dave, Duane, and Neil. They recorded this song on their final album, Changing World.
As they were in the studio working on the backup tracks, Enloe told the studio musicians, “I want the haunting sound of Ghost Riders in the Sky.” He explained: “That’s always been a very haunting kind of a sound. It was a time of great turmoil in the life of Paul and those 276 people who were on the boat. So I thought it will add a little drama to it, and I think it matched up well.”