Grain Within the Rye

It’s been seven years since I wrote this song. It feels like it’s still a new song in my head although I’ve written over three hundred since then. It’s something timeless.

Songs are like bookmarks in your life, coffee cups from someplace you’ve visited far away. If you’re a songwriter, you already know that when you listen to a song from years ago, the events surrounding that work of art start to materialize in your memory like an image in a dark room. I had just gotten a teaching job, and for the first time in a year, I had hope. This song was my attempt to hold onto this.

Art becomes your teacher. Humans change. We don’t like to admit it. We want to say something when we’re twenty five and still believe it when we’re forty. Or worse, we can hear someone say they believe something when their twenty five and don’t give them grace to grow out of or forget it. Songs have a way of reminding us, sometimes not so gently, what we once thought. It can crash into our hearts dramatically.

When Randy played this mix for me in his studio, I lost it. Remembering how bad that time in my life was, and that there were things that gave me small islands of hope to swim to, shook me down. He understood this song, took all my sorry attempts at playing instruments out, and laid down an arrangement so powerful that I think this is one of the strongest songs on the upcoming album Elseworthy. Rachelle and Morgan were the icing on the cake.

I hope when you listen to it, you also understand. There is another side. Another side to the good parts, but also the bad parts. You will visit them both over and over.

May this old song always be new for me and remind me of this truth. And now, may it be for you.