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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
You are a hammer, you are nails
I am seventeen and leaving
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 