(listen to an excerpt from a new song, Rusty Trucks + Daisies)
I don’t remember writing that first verse in a fresh new notebook. It was probably there for some time - scrawled quickly, on pages with no lines as it drifted down to the right like it was tumbling into a ditch after a heavy rain.
She never slept in the Chelsea Hotel, but she bought an old guitar just ‘round the corner.
It felt like the good start to a story. The dream unfulfilled, the six-string consolation prize. And then, what might happen next? I did not rush, and I did not ignore that lonely line. I kept it close.
Sure enough, a story did present itself. One all too-real, so to balance things out I wove in a handful of moments that never happened. She died in the winter, but I say she died in the Spring.
Some songs are written right there with new chords humming back at you, a dance partner waiting for you to lead, with a gentle hand on their hip. But this one was written in a hotel room, just humming to the walls and writing lines that felt like they could work, words that could be sung slowly with spaces in-between them. And then home, at that sacred hour in the afternoon when the belly is full, and the rooms are dead quiet smelling of ginger and leftover rice. The dishes are washed and the day’s work is done, and here comes an A major chord, sliding to a B minor and we’re off to the races so stay on that horse, she rides like a mustang from an old western. The road is fast and wild even though the song is slow as molasses. And then turn the phone on and record it, nail it down, document the madness, preserve the intentions before they evaporate and you forget every quirky phrase and turn because they are not really yours yet - the bird is still flapping around the living room and the windows will not hold it inside forever. It wants to get away as quickly as it arrived and you’ll be back with just those scribbled lyrics and no idea what to do with them.
the sacred hour