Love + Death + Traveling Songs
Lyrics

Lyrics

Mexico

I had a dream that we weren’t so old
We bought a car and drove to Mexico
Said let’s go
We had no money or a care
But we had the desert breeze in our hair
Let’s go

Let’s take it out onto the open road
With the top rolled down
Babe take it slow for me
Baby please don’t go so fast
Please slow it down and
Make it last for me

I had a dream about your summer skin
Salty brown and glistening
Just so
Your feet were buried in the sand
You were reaching out to hold onto my hand
Like you do

This is us out on the open road
With the top rolled down
Babe take it slow for me
Baby please don’t you go so fast
Please slow it down now
Make it last for me

I had a dream that I was kissing you
Everything about it seemed
Too good to be true
I don’t understand how this can be but
When I woke up
You were looking right at me
Said babe let’s go

Mexico artwork Mexico artwork

Subtext

I wish that we had met thirty years ago. My wife hears me say that at least once a week, sometimes much more often. Days pass slowly but the years fly by - this is the cruel trick played on us by time. I can close my eyes and imagine us in a car, on a road trip, young and in love. I want it to last forever, for us to actually be young again and together and to never grow old.


Time Travelers

When I read your text that said meet me for a drink
The clock said don't look now but you've got no time to think
I grabbed my jacket and I rushed out without a thought
Drove my truck to the creekside bar and met you in the parking lot
When we said goodnight I couldn’t wait to see you again
I was flush and vulnerable but I felt like me again
I was swaying on my heels drunk with afterglow
I should have met you a very long time ago

It’s been a couple of years by now and 
I can’t get you out of my head
The way you looked in that little black dress 
and the sound of your voice as you said
You don’t know how time travel works 
but you think it’s kind of dumb
That we just met and now it’s 2AM 
and one of us has got to go home

We're by no means perfect but our jagged edges fit just right
The best thing I've ever done was meet you for that drink that night
I'm still swaying on my heels drunk with afterglow
I should have met you a very long time ago

Remember when we broke into my old high school
And danced there in the dark
I would have thought it was all a dream
Except I could feel your arms
Hanging lightly around my neck
Listening to Eternal Flame
You just swayed there looking at me
Quietly while it rained

Album artwork Album artwork

Subtext

This song is a journal entry about two specific memories with my wife. The first is our first date, which turned out to be one of the most important nights of my life. We both knew something immediate and life-changing was happening, and we knew it in the moment.

The second moment was a day early in our relationship. We had visited my parents, and it was the last good day that I had with my father before he passed away. When we left my parents, I took my wife to my old high school, which was scheduled for demolition.

At her prompt, we found an unlocked door and walked through the halls, with me telling her stories of what I was like at that age. When we got to the cafeteria, I told her about how I had always found high school dances to be quite lonesome; that I had always dreamt about the shape of her and lamented at not finding her so much earlier. She pulled out her phone, turned on Eternal Flame by The Bangles, and put her arms around my neck and we danced there in the dark as it started to rain.


The Hard Songs

I met her on a Wednesday
I was holding for all my life on the line
She walked in the door
Found me on my kitchen floor
Nine days later I was hers and she was mine

We don't skip the hard songs
I might cry, she might sing along
But she knows every place
To put her hand up to my face
Her gentleness has righted every wrong

She knows all the names of the flowers
She knows all the names of the trees
She's talked me off the ledge
So many times now on the edge
I will kiss her with my eyes closed in the breeze

Gibson artwork

Subtext

This is a journal entry. I met my wife on April 28th, 2021 and within a few days we knew that we would spend the rest of our lives together. In the beginning, we bonded over so many things, one of the more prominent ways being music. Some songs were simply too potent; we couldn’t make it through without crying. She once told me “we don’t skip the hard songs”, meaning that we talk through everything.

She saved me, in a way, and she thinks nothing of it, as if it were as easy as remembering all of the names of the flowers and trees.

The bell that rings at the end of this song is our wedding bell that we rang in our home, at 6pm on April 28th, 2023 - two years to the day that we met. We played all of the hard songs that night and the only tears were that of thankfulness and joy.


Something

Something’s shifting in this room you walked into
I could feel you coming before I knew it was you
There’s something in your face and in your ways
I’ve never seen but now
I see my life, I see my death, I see everything between

My heart is lifting in this dark you've shone into
I can feel the difference in the light coming off of you
There is something in the way
That both our shapes were made so true
As you fit perfectly along with me and
I fit right with you

I swear I dreamt about your face
There’s something in the shape
that both our bodies make
Your bright eyes shining, you are the morning
You are my morning, shining in

Something’s different when my fingers hold your lines
I have felt you quivering a hundred thousand times
Every second that we touch / Now we’ve gone and laughed so much
We are fogging all the windows up
I can’t see the outside world but
I don’t care tonight

We'll do it right

Something artwork

Subtext

This is the second song that I ever wrote for my wife. When we first met, I told her that I wanted fusion. That is exactly what happened and we both could feel it. We upended one another’s lives and everything changed over the course of minutes, hours, days.

Before we even met, we texted for hours, day after day. She kept telling me “Something is happening”.

The first night we met, our first date, she couldn’t speak but just vibrated with an energy. I could feel that vibration in her for weeks. She was simply light, and after a lifetime of darkness, she was the morning that I had all but lost hope would come.

For weeks, when we would talk, one of us would say, knowingly, “something” and the other would answer, “something”. The first time I sang this for her was on the first anniversary of our first date, in a little cabin in Boone, NC.


San Luis

San Luis
I missed your desert heat
Your mountains looming high
Above the dirt
You spoke to me
Your exit sign was clear
You’ll find no comfort here
Only hurt

All of your young men think they’re cowboys
But none of them have left this god damned town
They wasted all their time holding to the line
That they would ride away from here somehow

San Luis
You brought me to my knees
You told me this is where
My life begins
But all that I found
Was heartbreak and the ground
Starting right here where the pavement ends

I thought I could be one of your cowboys
But I never got up from feeling down
I wasted so much time holding to the line
That I could make it in this god damned town

Mexico artwork Painting by Jim Musil

Subtext

I wrote this song the night after a really terrible phone call with my mother. She was sundowning and called me, hallucinating all sorts of terrible and terrifying things. I was far away from her, exhausted, grieving and hopeless in despair. Later that night, I couldn’t stop thinking, I couldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t escape the feeling of crushing, impending dread.

Around midnight, I got up out of bed, came downstairs to a dark and silent house, picked up my guitar and quietly wrote this song in about ten minutes. I just wanted to escape, so I thought about living out west in the San Luis Valley a hundred years ago. Socially, this song is an outlier and is also the only song on the album that does not correlate directly to a real, specific moment. Rather, it was an intentional escape from a moment.

The opening guitar melody is an homage to Claudia's Theme by the composer Lennie Niehaus.


Last Words

The very last words I heard my father say
Were I’m dying and it’s happening today
But I saw him whisper to my mother that night
Just before he went away
I know that he was telling her
Over and over and over again
That he would go ahead but he would wait for he
And that they would be together again

The next to last words that you might hear me say
Are I’m dying and it’s happening today
But if you lean in closer with your perfect face
You will surely hear me say
I’m telling you over and over and over
About our love
That I don’t have the words in me to tell you it all
And there just ain’t time to show you enough

dad artwork

Subtext

The first verse is a journal entry of December 3, 2021. The second verse is how I feel every single damn day about the love that I have for my wife.

When I let her hear it for the first time, she said “I wish it wasn’t over so quickly” and I responded - “that’s exactly the point”.


Colorado Pines

I just want to live where they close the roads in winter
Gates across the highway in some lonely mountain pass
I just want to wake up with the coals and smoldered cinders
Telling me just hold on cuz the winter never lasts

I just want to live among those pines and aspens blowing
A hundred miles above the din of Denver city ground
I just want to wake and hear the silence of me knowing
That my children and my mother are sleeping safe and sound

I'm really getting tired of Ohio
My heart is aching for those pinyon Colorado pines
I'll make it there someday as far as I know
As long as you are right there by my side

I'll build us a house by a lake up in the sky
Above the clover and the goldenrod all growing down below
I just want to wake up with you lying by my side
And hear you breathing quietly us touching head to toe

I just want to stand beside that still and lonesome water
And hear the voices of my father and my mother telling me
How to tame my restless heart, how to love my son and daughter
But instead they only left a note that says gone traveling

I'm really getting tired of the sorrow
My heart is aching for those pinyon Colorado pines
I'll make it there someday as far as I know
As long as you are right there by my side

Baby we should live out where
The railways were a going
A hundred miles from Jackson Hole
Or Craters of the Moon
I just want to wake to hear
That copper whistle blowing
We could leave a note that says
We’ll probably see you soon

Colorado artwork

Subtext

In the first year after losing my dad, my mother began declining with dementia. My sister and I were exhausted from all of the grief, the phone calls, doctor visits, our mother acting out and acting strangely. After a particularly long week of phone calls with my sister and my mother, both involving hard conversations that would often end in frustration and desperation, I broke down in tears to Christine. Choking on my words, I told her “I just want to live on the side of a mountain away from everyone and everything.” Colorado Pines is about that feeling.

During the worst parts of the two years of coping with my mother’s illness, I wanted to escape. I wanted to leave Ohio and to live in the mountains of Colorado, quietly with my wife. I dreamt about building a house and planting a garden. I wished I had my parents still, and their wisdom, to help me in times of duress - to talk to when I needed advice about raising my children, or calming my anxiety about moving through life.

I know that they had a good life. They loved traveling; they were always on the move and going somewhere. When I was a child I heard them dreaming about where they’d spend their latter years. Even then, when they were older they moved around a lot. Now I am fifty, and my wife and I are starting to have those same discussions. I know that as quickly as time goes, that at some future point, my kids will need me to yield the same advice to ease their hearts but I will also be gone traveling.


The Flood

When my father passed away
A few years and a day
My mother went out walking and
She came home with the shakes

Now there’s a baby in the creek bed and
A devil in the garden shed
A funeral procession always
Marching through her head

Most mornings on the plain
I’m nowhere as right as rain
The night before was way too short
And flash flooded with pain

I dreamt about the creek bed
And all the words my mother said
As she slipped out the window
When she went walking again

There’s a whisper that a flood is coming
It ain’t rained in weeks
The old men down in Reno said
That Momma’s in the creek

It was storming when the sun went down
She’s walking in her evening gown
The cumulus clouds gather round
And I, I ain’t slept in weeks

dad artwork

Subtext

The Flood is about my mother’s dementia, and the way that the dread and unpredictability affected me. This was written after San Luis, and “the plain” indicates that I am the same persona in this song - far away, but unable to escape. The timpani drums - that also occur in Colorado Pines - foreshadow thunder, the arrival of the storm and the impending flood that swept away my mother’s life, her house, and all of her belongings.


Blood Red Moon

When I was a boy just ten years old
Out walking in the woods, in the dark and cold
I saw a blood red moon sleeping in the trees
Scared me so bad I could hardly breathe

My grandpa died when I was asleep
When I woke up I saw my father weep
In the morning time, I heard him say
“I saw him laughing just the other day”

So many things I don’t understand
I was just a child now I am a man
I never thought life would be so hard
But I guess that’s what makes us who we are

I lost my mom and I lost my dad
Thought I lost everything I ever had
I wish I could close my eyes and be a kid again
There might be a blood red moon but I could talk to them

Can you see me through the clouds?
Can you hear me when I speak out loud?
If you saw me would you know me now?
And if you knew me, if you knew me would I make you proud?

farm artwork farm artwork

Subtext

I grew up on a small farm with my parents that was adjacent to the much larger farm owned by my grandparents - my father’s mother and father. It was the last homestead at the end of a very long, country gravel road. I walked all over those farms, dawn to dusk. One October evening I was out playing after dark, away from the houses, alone. I remember seeing a light through the trees and when I stopped to discern what it was I realized that it was the moon. It was red as blood and looked twice its normal size. We were a superstitious family, full of folklore and folk magic. I was not sure what this terrible omen meant, but it affected me deeply.

Shortly after that night, my grandfather passed away. It was one of the few times I ever saw my father cry. I remember my father saying at my grandfather’s funeral “I thought I saw him breathing”. I thought the same thing on the day I buried my father. My mother is still living, but dementia has taken her. One of the many parts of my grief is simply wanting to be able to talk to them both again - even if it meant going back in time to my childhood, with all of its uncertainty and darkness.

I don’t pray, but I think about life and death a lot. I don’t really believe in an afterlife, but I think about my parents, about my grandparents. Something must happen to our energy, our life force. I suppose it is just absorbed back into the air, the dirt, the flora and fauna. Sometimes I imagine my grandparents and my father above the clouds, beyond some imaginary veil, separated from me and the rest of the living in a way that they are as unaware of us as we would be of them.

The vocalization at the end of this song is close to the sound my grandfather made when he called the cattle to the barn for feeding.


Fine Lines

The lines of your face
deny every pen, defy every page
They are much, much too complicated
to be captured that way

Your ways are an ember
burning brightly right through my dark
Every touch from your hand holds
the strings to my heart, pulling them taut

Some to laughter
Some to tears
Some to the end of all of my years
At least one to this very moment
My Dear

You are drawn with such fine lines
You are drawn up with such fine lines

fine artwork

Subtext

My wife loves fine lines. When we visit museums, she’ll always look the longest at the paintings with the finest lines. She notices architecture, nice furnishings, the veins in the leaves of trees and subtleties in their bark. She loves poetry and prose, and she has an eye for design; she always reads her favorite lines aloud to me. She paints. She collects nice pens and paper. She’s drawn to, and made from, so many beautiful things.

I lament sometimes, often, that I wish that we had met thirty years ago. She’s heard me say that countless times. She’s answered nearly every time by reminding me that all of our years, all of our actions and experiences, have crafted us into the people that we are now, and that by that journey alone have we become the people that we now see and love in one another. I know that she is correct, but this never eases my pain and regret.


Camera Obscura

It's 3am and the pinhole weeps
The mourning wakes and the red light seeps
Into a darkness still and sound
All too familiar all around to me

Six foot one and all skin and bones
Never a goddamned day that I've felt at home
The mirror lies and bends the lines
All too familiar a thousand times to me

It's 3am again
It's 3am again
It’s 3am, and the sheet's too thin
And I am right here where I’ve always been

The lines are bent and the shapes aren't true
It's a razor's edge between me and you
I can’t sleep at night, the sheet's too thin
The room's too still and the light is coming in

It's 3am again
It's 3am again
It’s 3am, and the sheet's too thin
And I am right here where I’ve always been

Something artwork

Subtext

Camera obscura is a natural phenomenon in which the rays of light passing through a small hole into a dark space form an image where they strike a surface, resulting in an inverted and reversed projection of the view outside.

I’ve always had a distorted, unhealthy self-image. This is my self-dialogue, mentioning it to call out my anxiety and attempt to make it manageable.


This New Shape

There is nothing like the feeling
Of falling in love with you
The quickest glance from your eyes
Breaks my heart in two
It is broken in a way
That cannot be saved
But I would not have wanted it
Any other way

Your beautiful hands
Have pieced it together anew
And this new shape
Resembles me and you

fine artwork

Subtext

This is a journal entry. We met, and her love destroyed every regret, every hope lost, every unrealized dream that was before and reshaped my life into one full of hope and light.


Dogs in a Wheat Field

Like a couple of dogs loose
Running in the neighbor’s field
The barn at our back, We
Can’t believe how good it feels
I wasn’t looking for you
You weren’t looking for me
But at times like this
You just run and let it be

Like a couple of ditch weeds
Roots all in the dirt
Well you’ve got some flowers Baby
And I guess I’ve got some burrs
But we grow together, a union
Wild for sure
But I got the shade of your love and
I don’t need nothing more

Like a couple of song birds
Flown up on the hill
If it weren’t for you
I’d have kept flyin and
Never be still
I wasn’t looking for you
You weren’t looking for me
But baby you are the best thing
That will ever happen to me

dogs artwork Painting by Jen Kiko Rausch

Subtext

When I was eight years old, my father had a bonded pair of long-legged wire-haired fox terriers. One day, they got loose from him and darted into the neighbor’s wheat field. My dad was yelling for them, whistling and cussing and calling their names, but they couldn’t hear him; they were too overcome with the joy of being loose together. They were jumping, bounding, their heads appearing and disappearing over and over as they got further and further away. They were not aware of anything other than the feeling that they were exactly where they were supposed to be: together, free, and endlessly happy.

That’s the way I felt the night I met my wife. I told her the story of those dogs. I hadn’t thought about it for forty years, but the very first time we talked I remembered them because for the first time in my life I knew exactly how they felt. She and I are the same. We wake together, we lie down together, and we do everything the same in between, daily anew. She is my best friend, my confidant, the love of my life, and the very best thing that will ever happen to me. Every single damn day is the best day of my life because she is right there beside me in the wheat field.