The Official Music Video for Red Barns and People Get Old has just been published. Please take a moment with this special and personal story about generational ranching and the hearts and land involved.
Thank you for listening and thank you for sharing with the people in your life who may see a familiar story in this song.
Red Barns and People Get Old: Written by Jessie Veeder Starring: Cody Brown, Carol Mikkelson and Rosie Scofield Special thanks to Patty Sax Directed by: Nolan Johnson DoP Editor/Editor: Steven Dettling Video by @quantumdigital1404
Recorded at @omnisoundstudios Nashville, TN Produced, Mixed and Mastered by Bill Warner, Engineered by Josh Emmons and Bill Warner
The window to our bedroom was open and in my dreams I smelled it and heard it falling on the oak leaves still clinging tight to the branches. In our bed, between my body and my husband’s, our youngest daughter slept. Sometime during the darkest hours of the night, she wedged herself there, as she usually does, on a sleepy hunt for her father.
She is still only six. Or, she’s almost seven! She should sleep through the night on her own by now! We go back and forth on where we land with this, but in the middle of the night when the child needs someone to hold on to, neither one of us feels the need to fight it too hard. She’ll be grown soon. The bed is big enough. She won’t need us like this forever. I pull back the covers and I let her in.
I woke this morning to my alarm singing. Last week at this time, the sky would have been pink with the sunrise. This morning it was black.
“It’s time to wake up,” I huffed into the dark as my bare feet searched for the floor.
“Did it rain? Or did I dream it?”
My husband rolled over to try to wake our daughter and told me it wasn’t a dream. I pressed my face to the window screen to smell it the way I smelled it in my dream.
Even with the rain falling, my sleep wasn’t restful. My mind woke my body to worry about bills and things I shouldn’t have said and the work I should have done by now. And then enter the state of the suffering in the world, then of people I know and love, and things I can’t possibly change. Not at 3 am. Not ever.
Why is the quietest part of the night the loudest in my head?
Last week I visited a tiny town in North Dakota to play some music for a special event. In my career as a touring musician, I’ve had the privilege of learning how so many rural communities choose to bring people together, on a blocked off Main Street, in a Legion Club steel building, in an old high school gym, in parks and on patios. I perch myself up behind a microphone to tell stories to people listening intently or to a room full of folks who just want to visit, my music the backdrop to their conversations about the weather, the hay crop, the football team, the latest local tragedy or scandal. I use the word privilege because I regard the opportunity that way, even when the night is long and it feels like no one is listening. I get a front row seat to watch it all play out, who’s refilling the punch bowl and swapping the casserole dishes. Who’s folding programs and is the only one who knows how to turn on the old sound system. Who makes her rounds to each table to say hello. Who sticks around after to put away the folding chairs. Who’s kid grabs the big broom when the room is all cleared out.
Usually, I’m sent down the road with an extra centerpiece or noodle salad or a bag full of sandwiches and plenty of kind words and “thanks for coming all this way,” sometimes apologetically, as if their community isn’t as deserving of a visit as any other community in this country.
The air feels heavy as the weight of an election year makes big waves, moving through our conversations, across our kitchen tables, streaming through our speakers, screaming in the street. I lay awake last night and wondered, after all my life experience on the road and working in small towns, why it’s easier to holler enemy than try to understand one another. We’re making rivals out of our neighbors. It’s unsettling.
If I’m being honest, I’ve written and re-written the next two paragraphs a dozen times. Because I’m not sure what to say next. Here’s what I chose: Maybe you too were up in the quiet hours of the night with a loud head and a heavy heart. Maybe you felt lonesome or helpless, even with someone lying right next to you. Maybe you stood up and walked to the kitchen to feed your body and look at the moon. Maybe you slept soundly and dreamed about rain. Maybe you didn’t sleep at all. And maybe, in the midst of your insomnia, your daughter crawled in bed with you because she needs to be close. She needs to feel safe and loved. She needs something to hold on to.
And maybe, in the most tumultuous times, we could be brave enough to consider she’s all of us…
In my life, I’ve never really felt like I belonged anywhere except these acres of land where I was raised. When I was a young kid it’s where I felt the most myself, and it didn’t change the way I thought it would change as I grew up and went out to see how I fit in a bigger world.
I think about that girl I was, the one who, at barely 19, grabbed her guitar and gassed up her Chevy Lumina to hit the highway with her North Dakota accent and songs about cowboys and prairie skies and small town tragedies. I think about how I could be that rooted yet so completely comfortable on those highways and interstates that stretched on for miles between gas station snacks and Super 8 Hotels. How could everything seem so possible and impossible at the same time? I had no reason, no context in which I could reach back and pull that confidence, I just said yes, even if I was terrified, and got in my car and drove.
I turned 38 last month. And while I have plenty I could write about how grateful I am to be here, I’m feeling compelled today to dig out what I haven’t been saying, in part to keep with my promise to share the hard stuff in case it might help someone else with the hard stuff, too. And maybe as a reminder that what looks fine on the outside, might not be the full story, no matter what you’re seeing on social media or in that quick grocery store chat, no matter the motivational speaking and the narrative that indeed you can have it all if you just washed your face and planned your meals and made a monthly date night and cut out carbs and scheduled a run and went to church more…
I want to scream. One size does not fit all! One size doesn’t always fit one person!
And also I want to go back two years before I got sick and had my chest cut open and could maybe believe that stuff. Before the pandemic weighed on our health and our communities and our relationships so heavily. Before this chronic pain consumed me and made me feel guilty for not living each day to the fullest, because, I am, in fact, a survivor who wants to desperately to do more than just survive.
And so there I was standing in my kitchen sobbing, finally, to my husband, that spending a year and a half of my life draped in a nagging pain that threatens every day to steal the joy in which I’ve drawn my ambition and my confidence has maybe, at last, accomplished its mission. It was getting to me. I’m tired. Yes. Me. I get weighed down, too. I feel heavy. I don’t feel like I belong in this broken body sometimes, and this broken world, and then it makes me so angry. Because I’m tired and all I can do is sob in my kitchen and ask my husband to please, don’t try to fix it…
And so he doesn’t. He just listens. And tells me I’m human. And when you’re human you can be all of the things at once, happy and scared, grateful and mad and tired and hopeful and desperate and worthy and worried….
And so I take to the hills of this place that has held me so close and, even in the driest year, has never let me down. And it all seems so impossible and possible at the same time.
Keep driving.
A poem for healing
Wherever you are. However you are hurting, or sighing, or rejoicing,
I hope you have loving arms to hold you tight, to wrap around you and move you…
if you are low….
or if you didn’t think you could possibly be higher.
I hope those arms lift you, if just a little bit…a little bit more.
But mostly for you I wish,
wherever you are,
however you are hurting, or sighing, or rejoicing…
you will know to look to the skyline,
reach to the trees,
run your hands through the grass,
let the creek flow over your boots,
sit under the sunset and breathe in the cooler air…let the earth feel with you.
Let the dirt absorb the impact of a life you can’t control, lay down in it and know that you belong.
You belong here.
Here where you sigh.
You sigh.
And the earth sighs with you.
And you can cry. Scream to the sky.
I hope you know you can.
I hope you know something is listening, something can hear you and is echoing your pain, echoing the words “you will laugh again, you will, you will.”
And when you do, laugh loud.
Laugh at the hurt that tried to break you,
laugh because you know you can,
laugh because you never thought you would again.
Then reach for those arms, wherever you are, however you are hurting, or sighing or laughing…
reach for those arms, listen close and look to the sky…together.
September is National Suicide Prevention month. If you or someone you know is struggling, reach out. You are worthy. You are loved and you are needed here.
One set of markers. And then another. Some in their boxes, some without covers. Two lined notebooks, spiral bound.
An orange water cup. A princess crown. One egg carton for some creation, Forgot now what sparked such imagination. A small sticky puddle of chocolate ice cream.
Some glitter, some glue sticks, a five-year-old’s dream. And somewhere in pencil is Rosie Gene’s scrawl. There’s a splash of nail polish, a race car, a doll.
A pile of sweet tarts left stacked from Monday. Ten-thousand hair bands. A unicorn. Clay. And underneath, on the floor, I don’t want to look, half a cookie, a puppy, squished Play Dough. A book.
When the supper bell rings, you’d think, if you’re able You could serve your fried chicken at the kitchen table But able we’re not, because, well, we have kids and it seems that our table has turned into this.
A surface for projects and dreaming and snacks, and paper for drawings, stacks upon stacks. I’d clear it away, some days I insist, then others I simply just let it exist.
As an ode to these times that quickly pass by. Oh, the mess we can clean, but the clock won’t unwind. I know it is true, I remember the time when our table was set up simply to dine
and make up to-do lists, eat cinnamon toast or romantic spaghetti or a Tuesday night roast. I remember the quiet, the slow conversation about long weekend plans, or gasp, a vacation.
But now if we’re lucky, two words pass between us overtop of tall tales and loud songs and screeches. And this table, it listens, it hears all these things, the “Please sit on your butt” and “Listen to me!”
And the “What’s been your favorite part of the day?” Or, “I love it when you make the hot dish this way.” Oh, I can’t help but think it’d like to talk too, to say maybe go easy on the paint and the glue.
Or to comment on how fast they want to grow up from bottles to sippies to pink big girl cups. To thank goodness for sponges and quality soaps and for all of the prayers it heard as we spoke.
Because here among colors and the half-squeezed juice box, the pipe-cleaner bracelets and collection of rocks, if you sweep past the crumbs and the coffee cup rings you’ll find a spot at the table, a front seat to our dreams.
It’s a little familiar, a little bit wild
A big dream in the wandering eyes of a child
It’s all of the secrets wrapped up in the land
And all that we know about the pride of a man
It’s letting it go then holding on tight
It’s what’s left to lose at the end of a fight
It’s saying a prayer before hitting the ground
And when you need to be gone, it’s where you can be found
And that’s how it goes
With horses and home
It’s dirt under nails and work left to do
It’s fist clenching, back breaking, things that can bruise
It’s broke bits and burs and get up again
And all of the reasons to call someone friend
And that’s how it goes
With horses and home
We put up fences to own this place
Tame all the wild beasts and give them names
But we cant’ be sure just who’s being saved
When we let go of the reigns…
It’s wind through your long hair then on to the trees
Forgiveness and bravery on trembling knees
And then there’s the part where you think you might be
Stronger than most and a little more free
You are a hammer, you are nails spare change piled up on the nightstand I am half drunk water glasses on the coffee table top
You are snap shirts over t-shirts long hair tucked under your felt hat I am stories scratched on napkins and all the things that I forgot
All the things that I forgot
I am seventeen and leaving Twenty-one and almost gone You are eighteen with a ring just waiting for the time
To be together on the backroads Together at the movies Together buying groceries in the supermarket line
In the supermarket line
For all the things here that aren’t worth taking chances For all we lost that wasn’t worth the fight You are strong arms wrapped around my shoulders And we are swaying to the band at the bar on Friday night We are swaying to the band at the bar on Friday night
You are six eggs over easy coffee black and keep it coming I am wild plums in a bucket in the heat of August air
You are that green Chevy that we bought when we had nothing I am all the windows rolled down tangling up my hair
You’re tangling up my hair
And you are generations of people leaving town I am horses and hay crops in the field You were not supposed to be the one to stick around Then again I never really meant to leave here
Then again I never really meant to leave here
For all the things that aren’t worth taking chances For all we lost that wasn’t worth the fight You are strong arms wrapped around my shoulders And we are swaying to the band at the bar on Friday night We are swaying to the band at the bar on Friday night
You’re two fingers of whiskey. I am a glass of cheap red wine and we are standing with our bottles in the supermarket line
Maybe Jessie Veeder Living Room Session Listen Here:
Maybe we’re supposed to be brave
I don’t know what we are but we’re not made that way
We’re meant to be broken, put together, then saved
Maybe we’re supposed to be brave
Maybe we’re supposed to hold on
when it’s hard to admit it’s gone when it’s gone
In the bright light of morning we’ll be glad we were strong
Maybe we’re supposed to hold on
If love’s not for sinners who is it for?
If luck’s not for hard times who’s keeping score?
I used to know better, I don’t anymore
These mountains we’re climbing lead to the shore
Maybe we’re not supposed to know
every leaf on the tree
every last flake of snow
Because we’re just like the wind, how we come and we go
Maybe we’re not supposed to know
Our hearts can be broken our lives can be saved
In bodies too heavy to just fly away
There’s things that I know and things that I should
Maybe we’re just supposed to be good
Maybe what we have is enough
stop fixing and fighting to own all this stuff
We were meant to be brave, to hold on and give up
For sinners like us, what we have is enough
skin and bones and muscles
feathers on black wingssoft petals on pink flowers
and stem and branch and leafwaiting on the cool rain
waiting for the greenThis world is full of a sneaking kind of goldyou can find it on horizons
can’t be bought or held or sold and only in the morning
or at the perfect time of night welcoming a new day
setting up the lightThis world is filled with the most peculiar soundscroaks and sighs and wails
and squeaks coming from the ground and up above a whistle
and from the hills a lonesome cry and I wonder if the calling
is hellos or sad goodbyesThis world is full of wonder and moments to be brave and moments to remember
why we’re here and why we came and moments to be thirsty and moments to beholdand moments just to listen to all the life outside our door
That’s how it goes
skin and bones and muscles
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 