Something To Lose
ORIGIN STORY
Oh man. I love this song.
I remember around the time I wrote this song I had just met a young woman in North Carolina who I was about to fall in love with. I started to hear this song as I would be on tour for weeks or months at a time. But when I would be heading home I would listen to the radio and the romantic songs would remind me of her. They became the playlist of anticipation. I think the song unconsciously started there…
I kept making tweaks. “turning up the radio” felt too cliche. How about “leaning on the radio” for support. I kept exploring it…
I remember I was working on the chorus at my parent’s house on afternoon in Raleigh, and I was singing the last line “No it aint really living ‘til you’ve got something to lose” which I usually repeated twice, when my mom came in and asked: “What if instead of repeating it, you said something like ‘we won’t find what we’ve been missing til we’ve got something to lose.’” And she absolutely NAILED IT. I still love that line and I love that my Mom wrote it. She’s the best. I asked if she wanted to be a co-writer on the song and she shrugged it off. But you all know the truth!
The only thing was… I still didn’t have a second verse. So I brought the song into a writing session with a talented country songwriter from South Carolina named Patrick Davis. Together we came up with my second favorite line “if the past is my darkness that look in your eyes is my dawn.” And the song was complete!
I kept trying to get Delta Rae to record it, but it never worked. Here’s a version so you can hear what I mean:
We didn’t even like it enough to record the backing vocals haha. But I knew the song had magic. I just had to figure out how to unlock it.
I think secret was discovered back at the piano in 2019 when I started officially recording the album. I sat down and started to sing it and found a pulsed single note to play under the verses that kept the suspense, and then the unlock: an arpeggio to play in the chorus that let it open up and flow. I started to hear the song, not as a typically country song, but as a slow building anthem! This is what it always wanted to be. I just hadn’t seen it.
When I took it into Gideon and Gabe Klein to record and we started to carve out the structure I got SO EXCITED. The build up to the soaring guitar solo was beyond my dreams. It scratched every emotional itch for me. I hope you love it as much as I do.
This song is the sleeper hit on the album. I am so happy I didn’t give up on it. Turn it up while you’re driving home to someone you love. Life might not get any better.
