CHAD: Originally this song was going to be a sequel to “The Last Booth By The Window” as I was exploring “noir country”. The same guy, after he left the diner when it closed. Nothing was really supposed to happen. He just either didn’t have anywhere to go, or maybe he just wasn’t ready to go home yet.

Well, you can’t really have a story that leads nowhere. (Thanks, Thea!)

So, I went back to the drawing board and though much of the song stayed intact, we eventually fleshed it out more and it became more interesting - a veteran that made it home when some good men he served wth did not. A touch of PTSD and “survivor’s guilt” gave us the story that was worth telling.

As for some songwriting mechanics, I had a line something like “until the old ghosts stop chasing me, and ride with me a while”. Thea really changed it up, and it eventually became “Until the old ghosts stop following me, and just ride here beside me for a while”.

Simple changes like changing “chasing” to “following” and the addition of a word like “just” really transformed the lines into something both singable and more interesting.

I’m sure you have to have something to say about this one, Thea.

THEA: I believe in addition to the “song to nowhere” discussion, I brought up the idea that I need a reason to really care about this guy. He needs a story, he can’t just be driving around.

Within a few minutes, you had decided his story would be that he is a veteran—a topic you know well—and from there, we (mostly you) started crafting these lyrics. I think I came up with “their faces never leave my mind”, based on your slightly different original idea for that phrase, and there were half dozen or so others like that…but you ran with this concept as usual, and I love that it gives voice to the haunting guilt some vets feel: that they shouldn’t have been the ones to survive combat. And that it stays with them the rest of their lives. That they can’t shake it.

May as well invite the old ghosts to just ride there beside them for a while.