Category Archives: Music

Music by Jessie Veeder

Heroes Proved

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I’ve been writing music since I was a little girl. Some of it has escaped the walls that held me at the time, others have been locked up, unfinished, never ready to be played for anyone.

I have ideas. I try to show you. I try to tell it as I see it, or maybe as a stranger might. I try to share a little piece of me and my surroundings with whoever wants to listen.

I don’t always know what it is that I want to say.

Sometimes, if I’m lucky, the song knows better.

When I was in college touring the midwest in my Chevey Lumina, I wrote a song called “Heroes Proved.” It was the middle of winter in Northern North Dakota and I was cold. I was on the road and alone a lot. I missed home,  the smell of the sage and horse hair, black cows and the way the grass bends in the breeze.

I missed the neighbors and how they would come and visit on Sunday and linger over coffee.

And I missed cowboys, the ones I was convinced no longer existed in the world, except the few I left behind,  scattered and  lonely on the quiet scoria road.

I didn’t know if I would ever get back to that place for good.

I didn’t know if that place even existed anymore.

I didn’t know anything.

“Heroes Proved” was my way of asking the world to slow down.  I was desperate for it, but in a completely different way then I am now.

Now that I’m home and never leaving.

Now that I’m home and watching the world drive by–rushing, digging, kicking up dust on the way to meet the bottom line.

At 20 years old I couldn’t see the future. At 20 years old what I was writing felt so personal and disconnected from my peers. At 20 years old I couldn’t have known the progress waiting to barrel down that dusty road toward my family’s ranch, bringing me and the world with it.

“Heroes Proved” hasn’t been on my set list for years. I moved it out of the way to make room for new words and ideas.

I never considered that some of my songs might have become more relevant to me over time.

This is one.

“I think what you notice most when you haven’t been home in a while
is how much the trees have grown around your memories.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

Late summer rain

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It’s hot here. Like 90 some degrees. Hot and a little bit windy and a little bit dusty and a lot like late August.

The ditch sunflowers are out in full bloom and everything is taking cover, looking for shade or a place to cool down.

The heat woke up the  wasps. And the black flies. And the scum growing on the pond. The weeds are prickly and tall. The dust settles in on the lines on my face and makes me look a little weathered as I wander sort of aimlessly around the farmyard, thinking I should be doing something on this late summer afternoon.

But there’s nothing worth doing when the sun’s this hot.

The neighbors are putting up hay in the fields above the house.

They’re combining the pea crop up the road.

Someone out in this country is fixing fences.

When it’s hot like this the work still needs to get done. And so the cowboys and farmers are out in it, their faces red under their caps, their arms dark brown and dirty under the sleeves of their t-shirts.

Out there under the hot sun they work, thinking it’s likely a storm will blow through tonight, this heat conjuring up a big set of thunderheads on the horizon.

Thinking how nice a  rain would feel right now, the cool drops hitting their backs, the lightning striking and thunder cracking, promising a downpour to interrupt the work.

There’s nothing like a late summer storm that sends you into the house.

There’s nothing like watching it pour and knowing there’s nowhere you can be now.

Nothing you can do but watch.

I had the windows open last week as the clouds darkened the evening and turned dust to mud. I had my guitar in my hands and it was so sultry, being cooped up in the house, my husband on the easy chair reading a book and me singing something.

To me a summer storm out here is weighed down with emotion: relief and renewal, unrest and electricity, and a sort of loneliness I can’t explain. The sound of the rain on thirsty things makes me want to sit a bit closer to him, to tell him things I’ve forgotten to tell him, remember the other storms we watched together.

Because there is nowhere we can be. No work to be done in the pouring rain.

So I sang.

Sun beats down
turning my pale skin brown
I have been cold for months
I turn my face up

I hear the thunder crack
heavy drops lick my back
and I think how nice it is
that I can cool down like this

Oh, it’s raining
and lightning
it’s pouring

Oh, it’s raining
can’t get the crop in
come in and sit down
come on into the house

I’ll take that heavy coat
soaked to the skin, the bones
I’ll cook you something warm
as we wait out the storm

There’s nothing like summer heat
cooled down by a thundering breeze
there’s nothing like you and me
running

Oh, it’s raining
and lightning
it’s pouring

Oh, it’s raining
can’t get the crop in
come in and sit down
come on into the house

Looks like it’s letting up
steam rolls from your coffee cup
held by your callused hands
I like these change of plans

I pull your collar up
say this weather is like our love
pouring the heat on us
then it’s raining

Oh, it’s raining
and lightning
it’s pouring

Oh, it’s raining
can’t get the crop in
come in and sit down
come on into the house


For more of my music visit:
www.jessieveedermusic.com

Music in Montana

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So I have a really exciting weekend coming up and I am pathetically distracted by the anticipation of it all.

My meetings turn into day dreams, my rhubarb jelly is still just rhubarb, and my writing projects have all turned into lists of what we need to bring with us on our camping trip to the middle of a pasture in the middle of summer in the middle of beautiful Montana in the middle of a kick ass music festival where the boys and me have been granted an opportunity to play music among some of the greats.

I’m talking great, like Merle Haggard great. Like Corb Lund great. Like Robert Earl Keen, The Waylin’ Jennys, Todd Snider and many more talents set to pick and sing and tap their toes under that big Montana sunset.

I’m peeing my pants here in anticipation for Friday when I load up my music and my hat and hit the road for the Red Ants Pants Music Festival in White Sulphur Springs, Montana.

I’ll tell you why this is so cool for me on so many levels.

A weekend full of high caliber music, banjos and mandolins and harmonicas and guitars and songs about horses and love under a big blue sky with a cold brew in my hand is like on the top of my list titled “What heaven better be like.”

And if that’s not enough really, I get to bring my guitars, my boys, the lovely lonesome sound of the harmonica, my words and my music and we get to be a part of it all.

That kicks ass.

But what I’m most excited about really is what this festival is all about, because that’s the really cool part.

The Red Ants Pants Festival was created by a woman who grew up on a farm in Montana who was sitting at a coffee shop one day wondering why there weren’t any practically designed work pants on the market for women. I mean, tight, low waisted,  bedazzled butted jeans aren’t the most comfortable when a woman’s out chopping wood or pouring cement or pushing cows through the chute.

So she invented some. They’re called Red Ants Pants and you can buy them (and hats and t-shirts, aprons and belts and other fun stuff)  at www.redantspants.com 

And if you’re in White Sulphur Spring, Montana you can swing in her shop and buy some there.


I admire a woman who finds a solution to a problem (especially when it comes to minimizing butt crack and wedgies).

And I respect a woman who gives back to her community. And that’s what Sarah Calhoun is doing with this Red Ants Pants mission. She’s not only helping women get work done and look good doing it, she’s also established a foundation, The Red Ants Pants Foundation, with a mission to “support women’s leadership, working family farms and ranches, and rural communities; the three things most important to Calhoun, the company, and the Red Ants Pants Community.”

A portion of the festival ticket sales will go back to the foundation to help these causes. So while we’re singing and tapping our toes to the music, while we’re drinking beer and watching the sun go down on Montana, we will be supporting rural communities and the woman and families who work there. And that’s a really great thing.

Plus, they are hosting the Montana Beard and Mustache Competition State Finals, and really, that will be worth the trip right there.

I’m excited to be a part of it all…not the mustache competition necessarily, but the music part.

So we load up our guitars and our lawn chairs, hot dogs and picnic baskets, sleeping bags and lanterns and hit the highway pointing west on Friday.

And Saturday at 8:30 MT we’ll be singing under the Montana sky.

If you’re around, maybe I’ll see you there under your cowboy hat or big Montana beard.

If not, I hope you are making plans to spend this weekend in the middle of the best part of summer in the middle of a little piece of your own heaven.

And if you step outside and close your eyes and listen really close, maybe you’ll hear the music floating up to you from the edge of the mountains.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some lists to make.

Peace, Love and Harmonicas,

Jessie
jessieveedermusic.com
facebook.com/jessieveedermusic


Learn more about Red Ants Pants

Festival Information: redantspantsmusicfestival.com
Foundation Information: redantspantsfoundation.com
Product Information: redantspants.com 

Crocuses and how it could keep getting better…

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It’s officially crocus season, and that’s good news out here on the edge of the badlands where we’ve all been patiently waiting for them to arrive, as if the blooming of the first flower gives us permission to pack away our sweaters and pull out the short sleeves.

Well, that’s what I did anyway. I made a mountain out of the sweaters shoved in my closet. I pulled them out ceremoniously flinging them to the floor, purging my room of winter before I stood back and seriously contemplated throwing them out the window and lighting a match on the whole damn pile.

But that would have been crazy, and, well, let’s be honest, I’ll need them again in a few short months. Anyway, I didn’t have time for that. Little Sister was coming over and she had plans to soak up the sunshine and I had plans to procrastinate painting the bathroom.

So we grabbed our cameras and the herd of dogs…

One…

Two…

Three…

Four.

and went climbing around, scouring the ground for the purple flower.


Turns out we didn’t have to go far.





When you become familiar with a place in all of it’s seasons, you memorize where the crocuses bloom in the spring, where to go to pick chokecherries and raspberries in the summer, and to always, no matter the season, watch out for cactus.

We know these places because prairie people like us have vivid memories of hunting for crocuses with our grandmother, sisters, mothers or fathers, bending over to pull them from the tangle of brown grass while the warm spring wind picked up the loose hair that escaped from our ponytails.

I’ve been living back at the ranch for three springs and I will be here for the rest of the springs I am given. I will never forget what it felt like to climb to that hilltop and pick the first crocus of the year as I stood with my husband we looked down at our home.

And we were happy to be together, happy for summer to arrive and happy to stand on that hill for a moment that we were sure couldn’t get much better from here.

Then my Little Sister moved to our hometown and now the whole family is together and close and on Monday mornings I can expect a call asking me what I’m doing this weekend. Because my Little Sister plans ahead and I’m glad to be consulted on those plans.

So Saturday’s plans made room for crocus hunting in the warm sunshine next to a girl who used to follow me on my after school walks up the creek to my fort. I used to wish she would leave me alone then. I used to holler at her to stop following me and when we came in the house crying and fighting, our mom would promise us that someday, we would be best friends.

Funny how moms are usually, most likely, pretty much, always exactly right.

Funny how some things change, but I still haven’t mastered the art of convincing Little Sister to help me with my chores…like, oh, you know, painting the bathroom.

Funny how she still doesn’t listen to me.

Funny how the crocuses bloom on the same hill every year and someday we might have a chance to watch our own children run to the top and pick us a purple bloom.

Funny how it could possibly keep getting better.

To sing about it.

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Well, I made it back to the ranch and have found myself a moment to kick my feet up in the chair and warm up near the stream of sunshine pouring through the windows of our house on this beautiful almost-March morning.

Last week was a doozy that started with a flight out of Boomtown to Vegas to help my momma pick out some pretty things for her store. I had a couple mini-heatattacks during the two days filled with nothing but shopping, but I came out O.K. despite my run-in with these beauties…

and an entire Vegas-Sized convention center filled with nothing but shoes.

I could have spent the week there trying on all of the Luccheses and Ariat and Corrals and working out a second mortgage to afford a few pairs, but I needed some money to get back to North Dakota for the concerts I had scheduled across the state.

Now let me tell you, there are few things that give me more joy than music and beautiful boots, so I was off to a great start as I stepped off that plane from Vegas. The cold air bit at my exposed fingers as I ran to my car, praying that it would start so I could get home in time to load up my guitar and head out the door again.

Because I booked February up pretty tight, playing music almost every weekend and trying to keep up with work and dinner in between. When I do this to myself a few little bobbles are inevitable–like locking my momma’s keys in her car and losing my debit card–but I have become pretty good at brushing them off and finding quick solutions (like calling Pops or Husband to rescue me), because I am a woman of very many mistakes.

But now that the whirlwind has settled for a bit and the pug has moved from the top of my unpacked suitcase…

to the couch beside me, I don’t know exactly where to start except to ask you this: Have you ever found yourself standing in a moment that has come together so sweetly, a moment so undeniably and perfectly comfortable, so surprisingly you, that you can do nothing but close your eyes and thank the stars above that you chose to step out that day instead of staying nestled under your covers safe and sound?

I hope you have.

I hope you’ve found yourself in one of those breaths where the things you’ve worked for have proven worth it.

I have been a singer my entire life. I’ve sat around campfires and on flatbed trailers in the middle of small town streets. I have climbed crow’s nests to belt the National Anthem out to bleachers and arenas full of cowboys and I have sat behind my guitar to serenade couples saying their vows and families saying goodbye. I have played to crowds from three and three hundred. I have played by heart and forgotten words. I’ve stomped my feet and swayed back and forth in smokey bars and competed with the latte machine in small coffeehouses. I sit alone in my bedroom on hot summer nights and cold, dark winter mornings and I sing.

I have never loved anything the way I love hearing the words I’ve strung together come out of my mouth and into the air, sometimes unexpectedly and sometimes just the way I meant.

And nothing has ever made me so nervous, so frustrated, so calm, so inspired and uninspired, so sleepless or relaxed, so conflicted or comfortable or scared or absolutely and utterly, undeniably happy.

That’s the thing about music, you just never know. And the choice to put it out there in the world makes it even more unpredictable, it leaves you wondering who is listening, who might understand, who might hate it, who might love it too and who might just want to sing along…

Last Thursday I loaded up  my guitar and headed to the big town to meet up with some musicians at the studio and practice for the CD release party I had scheduled at a theater the next evening. I brought along Pops and Adam and we were going to work out my tunes with a fiddle player, a steel guitar player and a drummer. I had never met the fiddle player or the drummer and the guitar player and I had been working out details over the phone and email for a few weeks. I didn’t know these men and I didn’t know what to expect, except that somehow we had one evening to get it together in time to play for the few ears I hoped were making plans to attend the next night.

In these unpredictable moments I wonder why I didn’t just pick a career that might have me home eating hot dish on a Thursday night.

But my worry melted away faster than it had creeped in on me as these men trickled into the studio, making small talk while unloading their instruments and arranging themselves in a circle.

The drummer counted off the beat to the first song, the bass line fell in easy as the fiddle sweetly moved in with the line of the steel, leading me in to the words of the first verse of a song these men had clearly listened to closely.

My songs were songs they knew.

And I knew then that it didn’t matter if the only people who walked through the doors of that theater the next night were the members of this little band we threw together, although I felt it would be a shame if there weren’t more ears there to listen to the sweet sounds of that fiddle.

Because just as these men took the task seriously it was clear we all shared a little something in common. It was clear that they weren’t sitting behind those instruments after a long day of work on a Thursday night with a woman they had never met because she was going to pay them good money to be there.

No.

They knew better. They know the business.

They were there with me because they love to play. And man, are they talented.

Man, was I lucky.

Man, did we have fun.

And man, did that theater fill up the next night.

I mean, to the brim! People were coming in from all walks of life to have a drink and listen to what we had up our sleeves. There were farmers and bankers and mothers and aspiring drummers, my best friends, people who knew my parents, people who were related to us, to our neighbors, to our neighbor’s neighbors.There were classmates and old roommates and my best friends’ mothers. There were people who I’ve never met, young girls with their own copy of the album who wanted to be singers some day, other musicians, dads dancing with their daughters and people who wanted to talk about the pug.

There’s always people who want to talk about the pug.

I was overwhelmed with gratitude that this group of people decided to spend their Friday night with me and the talented men playing their hearts out in the spaces that needed them in the songs.

There was so much joy in that room and on that stage, and because it is North Dakota, there were so many connections, so many stories that we could all relate to–the red dirt roads, the smell of clover on a hot summer morning, the warm glow of the yard light next to the barn and the unwavering respect for the place that grew us up and sent us out into the world as we looked back over our shoulders for the right time to return.

Music has given me so many gifts. It has taught me to stand up straight, to be honest, to work a little harder, to stay calm, to reach out, to be brave and, most importantly, to listen.

And I could have listened to the beat of that drum, the lonesome sound of that steel guitar, the steady thump of that bass, the sound of my father’s voice and that fiddle backing me long into the night and on until the sun came up. But I didn’t want to let those people sitting patiently in their seats, along the steps on the floor or standing along the back of the room by the door out into the night without knowing them and why they came.

I wanted to shake every one of their hands and give them hugs and thank them for coming. I wanted to invite them over for coffee this spring and to sit on my deck and drink margaritas this summer.

I wanted to tell them all how much it meant to me that they came.

And I wanted to hear their voices.

So I sang Red River Valley and they sang along and I will never forget the sound of our voices together in the middle of the prairie on a chilly winter night.

And the next night I sang those songs again, standing next to Pops and another talented guitar player as the wind whipped through the narrow streets of downtown Fargo and the crowd swayed and tapped their toes.

There are so many things in this life that I love: pretty boots and pretty horses, my family, crocuses on the hilltop in the spring and the way the sun rises and shines through the windows of a house my husband is building for us.

I know I would love these things even if I never sang another song about it, but to be able to sing it out loud to ears that want to hear, not just the beautiful things, but the things that scare us and make us braver, hoping that maybe someone out there might not feel so alone, that’s my life’s sweetest gift.

Thank you for coming to hear me play. Thank you for playing along. Thank you for reading. Thank you for telling me your stories.

Thank you for listening.

www.jessieveedermusic.com 
www.facebook.com/jessieveedermusic

Click here to watch a short KX News segment on the concert in Mandan.

Singing for my supper

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Jessie Bismarck Party

Well, I haven’t seen much of the ranch lately and am looking forward to a cup of coffee in my big chair watching the sunrise out my window on Monday morning when the dust finally settles on this week, but for now I’m having a blast planning, playing and performing in celebration of the release of “Nothing’s Forever.” 

A big thanks to Bismarck/Mandan and the ONE Theater for a wonderful turnout and beautiful crowd.  I was able to get together with some talented musicians and convince them to share the stage with me. Standing up there with them last night was one of the best music moments of my career.

Practice

Practicing at Makoche Studios

Now I’m heading a little further east to do it again in Fargo, tonight at 8 pm at Studio 222. The show is free, all ages and open to the public.

Click here to watch a video interview with the Fargo Forum about my music and inspiration. 

And I’ll see you in Fargo…

or back at the ranch!

IMG_1032

Living room songs.

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pixlr-2
I’m going to do something a little different here today and I hope you don’t mind. See I just returned from a trip to the mountains where I played in the snow during the day and listened to some of the world’s best musicians at night. It was a vacation full of refreshing things: mountain air, mandolins, whiskey drinks and my best friends in the world.

pixlr-3

And now I’m home at the ranch, catching up on a couple days of work and planning for some shows of my own in the coming days and thinking that isn’t it amazing how we all have stories in us, little quips of life that we get to share over dinner, shoulder to shoulder as we drive across Montana in a pickup heading toward a mountain or on stage to a crowd drinking beer and tapping their feet.

Trout Steak Revival. Big Sky Big Grass Festival

Trout Steak Revival. Big Sky Big Grass Festival

I’m thinking there’s so many ways to tell these stories and I have chosen a few, but my favorite has always been song writing. I love to sit down behind my guitar on a snowy evening or a quiet morning and work out a melody, pick out words to roll off my tongue, join together and send off into an empty room while my fingers search for the next chord and a soft place for the music to land.

To come to the end and know that it means what you meant, though you know nothing of where it came from is a quiet little satisfying mystery.

photo-28

I write songs to fill forgotten corners of my life. I write songs to see if I might be able to add to the beauty in the world. I write songs to tell you something that might otherwise go unsaid. I write songs for the love of writing. For the love of singing my own words out loud.

I write songs for no reason but to sing them to the walls and the dog at my feet, songs that never touch another’s ears.

I wrote a song today.

photo-26

After my coffee had cooled, my emails were answered and phone calls made, I sat down behind that guitar and listened for what might come from me.

Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes I hear it in pieces and sometimes it unfolds like it’s been waiting for me to come knocking.

Always I tuck it away for another day, another show, another time that might be better.

Today I decided to share it with you. A song. Just born in my living room on my lunch break with my laundry in piles and the dishes in the sink and no plans for supper or anything really because I wanted to sing something new, so I made this.

Please listen and enjoy and keep writing, singing, creating and sharing your own stories.

I used to be
Jessie Veeder Living Room Session
Listen here:

I used to be a  summer storm
Rolling dark across the plains
I used to bend the trees down
I used to know the rain
I used to make the wind howl
A version of a hurricane
I used to make it pour
I used to be a storm

I used to be a whiskey drink
Burning strong against your lips
Heating through your veins
Softening your fingertips
I used to hold you tight there
I used to make you sing
I used to make you brave
I used to be your drink

I used to be a fast train
Loud and steady on my tracks
Heat and iron and muscle
No promises of looking back
A heavy hearted stranger
Gone before I came
Like smoke on the horizon
I used to be a train

But that’s before I loved you
Before I ever knew
That no matter where you are now
I want to be there too
So I think I’ll be a bird now
With silver coated wings
I want to be your song now
More than any of those things

I used to be a summer storm
Rolling dark across the plains
I used to bend the trees down
I used to know the rain
I used to make the wind howl
A version of a hurricane
I used to make it pour
I don’t do that anymore

photo-27

Upcoming Shows: 

February 14 & 15
Theodore’s Dining Room
Medora, ND
5:30 – 8:00 PM (MT)

February 22
O.N.E
Mandan, ND
7:00 PM

February 23
Studio 222
Fargo, ND
8:00 PM

More information at www.jessieveedermusic.com 

The heart of America

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When I was touring, some of my favorite spots weren’t necessarily my destination, but the Main Streets I passed through on my way to the next stop.

And much of the time I made the small towns my next stop. Because I liked the way the store fronts lined up. I liked the old diners. I liked the flower shops and drive-throughs that have been painted and repainted and still have the best burgers. I liked the quiet little rivers that ran through them or the surprise fishing pond I might find. I liked the playground equipment and the walking paths and the old men who met for coffee at the Cenex Station.

I passed through many small towns on my way to Minneapolis or Chicago or to other small towns in Nebraska or Kansas or down in Oklahoma and they all had their own flavor–old houses repainted standing behind tall and neatly placed trees, fresh pavement outside the old soda fountain, kids riding their bikes to the new Dairy Queen, a swimming pool or a beautiful school.

If I had time to kill between stops I would slow down and turn off of the Main Street to find a restaurant or a park where I could walk around. Or maybe I would just drive through the residential streets, admiring the freshly cut lawns, watching the kids ride their bikes and throw footballs in the front yards, imagining what my life would be like if I lived in this town by a small lake in Minnesota, or the one in the middle of a field in Nebraska or in the heat at the edge of Texas.

I loved to see America by car. It was a slow-paced adventure filled with time to contemplate things like how one might wind up in Ada, Oklahoma while picking up a sandwich at the local grocery store before heading out to search for a movie theater.

I have traveled through some major cities, but none have made such impressions as those with two gas stations, five churches and six bars.

Show me New York and then take me to gossip on your front porch along a quiet street on the edge of Small Town USA, population 800 or so and I will feel at home.

Last Friday I found myself in one of my favorite small communities in North Dakota, having arrived there in a pretty unconventional way for someone who spent three years of her life reading MapQuest directions and filling the floor of her Chevy Lumina with soda bottles and granola bar wrappers. See, one of my dearest friends invited me to play music at an Opera House in her hometown on the other side of the state and I gladly agreed. So I called up the boys and invited them to join me on the four or five-hour  to drive to this unique and arts-focused agricultural town out east.

But Adam said no to my carpool request.

Adam said he’d fly us.

Remember Adam? Yeah, he flies airplanes.

Yup. Friday night we had a gig. So on Friday afternoon Adam loaded up three guitars, three suitcases, his brother and me in his small airplane  and we took off from the runway in our quickly sprawling small town to get us to the next small town on time.

Now, let me remind you that the last time I was in an airplane like this I had been drinking tequila for two days and decided it would be a good idea to jump out of it over the ocean.

That was stupid.

But this, it was…well…pretty lovely.

I had never left town this way or seen my world from this elevation with its frosted buttes, ribbon-like streams, perfectly placed tree rows and miles of trucks and pickups making their way to and from and in and out.

I could have been between them, pushing on to the next gas station to grab a cup of coffee and fuel up before I hit the road.

But I was in the sky with my bass player and his brother and we were going to New Rockford to see one of my very best friends and play music at an old Opera House the creative and inspired residents found special enough to save.

Along the badlands, over the big lake, across miles of fields and dozens of farmhouses Adam flew us across our home state.

One hour and 20 minutes later we touched down on a snow patched runway, unloaded the plane and hugged my friend hello as she swooped us up for a glass of wine and a cheeseburger before we stood under the lights,behind the microphones and on the stage of the Opera House in New Rockford.

And as I swayed and tapped my foot next to my friends playing bass licks and harmonica and singing along to my songs about home and hope and dusty roads and cowboys who have lost themselves, I could feel the people of New Rockford nodding their heads.

I could hear them laughing. I felt like they knew me, like they were my brothers or my grandparents or my little sister, aunts, uncles and old friends.

I felt like they’ve been on that road, like they’ve felt that kind of hurt, like they’ve been as unbelievably grateful while mind-numbingly torn.

I felt like they might have loved something the same way I love.

I am a songwriter. I am a songwriter in a small town.

I sing.

Photo by Sarah Smith Warren

All my life people have been telling me to move away from the comforts of these towns and these open roads that have grown me and made me who I am.  They tell me to leave while they wonder out loud why I’m not chasing the dream they’ve concocted for me, one that lies on the end of the road that leads to Nashville or New York or L.A, someplace bigger and full of more promise for someone like me.

Photo by Sarah Smith Warren

But on Friday I saw my small world from the clouds only to land among the people in my songs. And I would have stayed there forever with them like that, singing about our lives and drinking red wine and laughing.

Photo by Sarah Smith Warren

Yes, on Friday I fell in love with music again, just as I do every night I sing in the smoke of the Legion Club, above the noise of a Main Street or out into the night outside the window of this house.

Photo by Sarah Smith Warren

And I imagine Adam  could fly us all over this country and we could knock on the doors of big houses in bigger cities and ask them to listen. Adam has wings you know.

Photo by Sarah Smith Warren

But I’ve never been as comfortable up there as I have been tucked behind my cracked windshield and singing to the heart of America.

Click here to watch Husband and I chase cows and talk about the music and life in our small town.
www.jessieveedermusic.com

Music Music Music

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It’s a big day in America and I’d like to welcome you to it. As you make your way to the polls and anxiously await the anticipated announcement, I’d like to share an anticipated moment of my own.

My new album, “Nothing’s Forever,” is now available for your purchase and listening pleasure at these outlets

You’ve all been such loyal fans of my stories and photography, so I want to invite you to test out the music. It’s my first and most important passion, and the way I learned to express how I felt about my sense of place, love, life and moving on.

“Nothing’s Forever” is a compilation of 13 original songs, most written since I moved back to the ranch and started sharing what coming home feels like on this website. If you’re an avid follower, you might find familiar stories in this music.

I’m proud of this piece of work and the local musicians who helped me put it together. Listen and you will hear Pops’ voice and harmonica, the lonesome sound of of the steele guitar and dobro, and Adam’s bass backing stories about life in an oil town, the chill of winter, driving down red roads, love, and missing someone.

This is my third studio effort and one that has took a little growing, a little moving, and a soft and familiar place to land in order to create.

Thanks for listening.

I hope you love it.

I hope you share it with your friends.

Peace, love and music from the ranch.

Now, go VOTE!

The day the water came to us.

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This was our world last weekend as Pops, Little Sister and I rode through our fields and pastures. It was a beautiful nearly 60 degree day, the sun was shining and the scent of damp leaves filled the air as they crunched under the hooves of our horses. On days like these I convince myself the sky will stay blue forever.

But this morning I woke to a chill in the air that left frost on our windshields and a dusting of snow on the ground. The sky is gray and soon our world will turn white.

And I’m reminded how fast some things change.

I mean, wasn’t it just yesterday that Little Man was working on growing hair?

Now look at the guy. He’s growing up, honing his farming skills, learning to drive, and really getting the hang of that hair-growing thing.

Little Man turned 2 last weekend. His two-years-of-life celebration was another reminder that time changes things–just as it grows tomatoes it grows little boys…and sometimes I can’t tell which ripens faster.

But this week I was also reminded that not all change comes quickly. Some milestones are their own kind of miraculous.

See, on Wednesday this ranch was officially hooked into a rural water system that provides safe and clean drinking water to residents living along gravel roads miles away from the nearest city sidewalk. It’s a monumental event for those of us who depend on wells and springs to supply our family and farms with water for laundry, livestock, noodle cooking and baby feeding.

Out here among the gumbo hills that freeze solid in the winter and often dry up with the heat in the summer, the availability of a reliable water source has determined the fate of many farms and ranches, being the one non-negotiable variable when it came to the location of the house, the barn and the livestock pens.

When we determined the site for the new house last winter we were aware that we had the option of purchasing rural water, an option available to us that was not available to my parents or those who made their homes out here first. We made in a deposit and waited patiently as the system was put into place, a project that started with a vision and has taken over three years to come to fruition. For the three months that we’ve been living in this new home Husband has filled a giant tank in the back of his pickup with water from town, hauled it 40 miles down bumpy highways and gravel roads and hooked it up to this house so that we can take a shower, clean our dishes and fill the dog dish.

Without the rural water option, we could not have built our house here under my favorite hill tucked back in the oak trees–the same spot where the little ranch house was located when my father was a young boy. He and my aunt remember the day the family decided to move their home over the hill, back to the original Veeder homestead where a spring watered the livestock.  The decision was a result of a losing battle with a well that continued to sand in. Both my aunt and Pops have mentioned how disappointed they were to abandon their little oak grove to the treeless farmyard just over the hill, so much so that the 7 or 8 year-old Pops took to the hills with a bucket and a shovel and proceeded to transplant a series of native trees from the coulees to his new yard in an attempt to recreate his preferred surroundings.

Some of those transplanted trees still remain in that barnyard, the spindly but proud result of a little boy hauling water in buckets from the spring to encourage them to grow tall in the hard gumbo soil, to provide him shade and leaves to rake.

“A yard should have trees,” Pops declares whenever the moment is right, an opinion that determined the fate of my own childhood growing up in a house tucked alongside a creek-bed that winds through a thick mass of trees.

As a child I would take off my shoes, tie the laces together and swing them over my shoulder so I could walk in the water, following the creek as it bent and bubbled in the most secret places on the ranch. It was never a question to me what was here first–the water or the trees. I knew that if I were an oak I would take root next to the water.

I suppose trees aren’t that much different from people in that respect, only I don’t imagine trees have much to do with the politics involved in such a precious natural resource. They take what they need to grow and leave the rest in the ground for the next living thing that comes in for a drink.

Humans make it complicated. And the road to come up with a way to pipe and manage this fresh, clean and paid-for water that is now flowing out of the faucets and into the kitchen sinks and bathtubs of my neighbors miles away has not been without its politics, fights and complications.

But this morning I woke up to fill our coffeepot, just like I had done the morning before, and the morning before. But it meant something different today as I lifted the glass pitcher up to the window. Husband shuffled in behind me and we stood there for a moment, taking in the monumental fact that this water that will brew our coffee traveled for miles in a pipe from the big lake where we swim and fish, has been purified and pressurized and cleaned up nice and fresh to ensure our white clothes stay white and our ice-cubes crystal clear, this water in our coffeepot is ours. Reliably, clearly and without much worry.

When we lived in the old house last winter there were times when we came home, turned on the faucet and had no results. This would send Husband pulling on his snow boots, wool cap, gloves and coveralls to investigate the situation. It might have been wiring, or a bad pump, a short or something I never really understood, but either way, it was our responsibility to figure it out.

Our quality of life out here in the middle of rural America depended on it.

Today we don’t have to worry about such things.

Today if we wake to find we don’t have water, we can make a phone call and someone on the other end can help us find an answer.

Today I can’t help but think of my grandparents who built a house in their favorite spot, our spot, only to have to literally pick it up and move it to the water.

Today I think of the homesteaders out here on the prairie in the heat of summer or the cold of winter worrying about water. Worrying if there would be enough. Finding solutions to get it to their homes and livestock. Making tough decisions based on the source.

On Saturday my parents will get their rural water. My mom will no longer have to take her white clothes to town to be washed, a chore she’s been performing for years to avoid rust streaks on light clothing from the discolored water that comes from her spring. My Pops will no longer experience the worry of sleepless nights when the faucet is dry and he doesn’t know why.

The day the water comes my parents will celebrate a monumental occasion, a long-awaited change, that, for as long as we are living, will not be taken for granted.