"At the edge of town on a quiet street..."

Time is one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to songwriting. Looking back. Looking ahead. Making the most of the time we have. Maybe it comes from often feeling caught up in the fast-paced nature of life. It's easy to lose track of time until one day you realize how much things have changed. Childhood friends have grown up and moved away. Family members have gotten older and passed on. Life has become busy and confusing, and in the midst of it all, there's a solace found in pausing to reflect on simpler days. I find that in writing and singing songs about the past.

"If the Walls Could Sing" is about visiting the place where I grew up--a small town east of St. Joseph, just off 36 HWY. My family lived at the edge of town, in a house across the street from the catholic cemetery ("where the sky and the tops of the headstones meet"). We really did have a porch swing hanging below our deck. The idea of the song is this: if that house could see and share stories about what took place there, what would it say? Would it tell of the Christmas mornings gathered around the tree? Or the firework displays we hosted on the 4th of July? Or maybe it would just reminisce about the Friday movie nights we looked forward to each week. There'd be so many great tales to relive. And some not-so-great ones too. But that's life, and I'm thankful we had far more good times than bad.

My brother and I spent many a day playing outside in the backyard "under the watchful eye of a cloudless sky." That lyric with the accompanying melody actually came to me years ago and was intended for a different song that never came to fruition. I loved the imagery, so the line stuck with me. It seemed like a good fit as a chorus for "If the Walls..." after the verses began to take shape. I came up with the guitar part for the song when I was a teenager. Again, I loved it and tried many times to fit it with other songs I was writing. When I started playing it with the melody for the verses, it came together quickly. The bridge came instantly. I knew I wanted to feature that lyric--"it feels a little like home to me"--at an earlier point in the song, so I tucked it into the first verse. Getting the rhyme scheme right without compromising what I wanted to convey was probably the most difficult part of writing this song. I revisited ideas multiple times before I felt like it was finished.

Some songs are born out of observations or other people's stories. And some are born out of your own. I love performing "If the Walls Could Sing" not only because I enjoy the song, but because it's part of my story. And I revisit that time and place whenever I sing about it. I hope others can connect their own experiences with mine. Where the hours passed by. Where they came alive.

If you're traveling east on 36
And your spirit longs to be transfixed,
​There's a place that you should see

In a town with a simple way of life,
Untouched by the hands of change or strife,
Where it feels a little like home to me

Take Main Street past the theater
And turn right just before the catholic church,
Where the parish bells still ring

And at the edge of town on a quiet street,
Where the sky and the tops of the headstones meet,
There's a house with an old porch swing,
And if you sit there listening,
Oh the stories you would glean
If the walls could sing

It was in that house we learned to live,
To heal and hope and to forgive,
'Til the day we spread our wings

And whether life brought happiness or pain,
We would play outside 'til evening came
In a backyard fantasy,
Once upon an old porch swing
The memories would be deafening
If the walls could sing

Under the watchful eye
Of a cloudless sky
There the hours passed by
There we came alive 

And it feels a little like home to me
​It feels a little like home