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If you want to play along with the recording in GCEA tuning, you either have to put your capo on the 9th fret, or detune by 3 semitones. Fastball sings the song starting on F#m. Many years ago when I was working, once a week on a lunch hour, I would teach interested colleagues how to play the ukulele. At first it was all women, and we called ourselves The Chicaleles. And then a young man, Cory Porter, joined us. He didn't want to play ukulele BUT he loved to sing with us, and this is a song he introduced to us. We contemplated changing the name of the group to "Chicks and Dick" but....
Lead vocalist Tony Scalzo was inspired to write "The Way" after reading about the disappearance of an elderly couple who were found dead in their car many miles away from their intended destination. Lead vocalist Scalzo came up with the idea for the song after reading articles that described the June 1997 disappearance of an elderly married couple, Lela and Raymond Howard from Salado, Texas, who left home to attend the Pioneer Day festival at nearby Temple, Texas, despite Lela's Alzheimer's disease and Raymond recently recovering from brain surgery. They were discovered two weeks later, dead, at the bottom of a ravine near Hot Springs, Arkansas, hundreds of miles off their intended route. The authorities who investigated the incident believed that Lela, who was driving the car, was trying to locate a place where she had once vacationed. You can watch the 2nd video which is a news story on the disappearance of the Howards.
"The Way" peaked at #1 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in April 1998 and remained there for 7 weeks. It also reached #1 in Canada on the week of June 15, 1998, and topped the RPM Alternative 30 chart for 4 weeks. Worldwide, the song peaked at #7 in Sweden and entered the top 20 in Australia, Iceland, and Norway. The song was voted by VH1 as one of its "100 Greatest Songs of the '90s", ranking it at #94.