The Yellow Door Life

One of the most valuable lessons I have accomplished so far as a teacher is using the Words and Music program created by the Country Music Hall of Fame. 

From researching it, to getting approval to use it; applying for and being awarded a grant so I could implement the program at no cost, to seeing the impact the curriculum had on my students – it is safe to say that words and music have always been, and will always continue to be, part of my life personally and educationally. 

Last July, I participated in the professional development for this curriculum. During this session, we got to tour the Country Music Hall of Fame and went through the process we would later take our students through – lyric writing. 

As with all writing processes, it started with brainstorming – writing down as many ideas as possible about what our song could be about. 

Some of the teachers in my group wrote about their children, some knew they wanted to write about the subject they taught (math), and I, as usual, took the assignment very seriously and began to go down memory lane. 

When we discussed what makes a good song I raised my hand and said, “Storytelling.” 

Storytelling is at the root of all good things, in my opinion, but the best songs tell a story that you can relate to – whether it be good, bad, ugly, or funny.

I went on to say that I had “Somewhere Over Laredo” by Lainey Wilson stuck in my head and that was an example of good songwriting. 

Everyone agreed and as I began to focus on my own lyrics, I thought about what that song meant to me. I had just heard it for the first time a few weeks prior on the first day of my massive road trip to Texas and Colorado. It was a play on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and as a big fan of Oz, that really spoke to me. It was also about long, lost love in Texas, and as someone considering a move to Texas, it also made me question the destiny of my own love life if I were to move there.

As I began writing my lyrics, I had Lainey’s melody in my head, but my song started to shape into my story. A story of loss, hometowns, train tracks, friendships ended too soon, and even a haunted school.

I kept pacing around the room we were working in as I searched for the way to make all these subjects come together cohesively, while rhyming. 

I stared out the giant windows at July light and the Nashville skyline and snapped this picture:

If I was going to write my first song, there was no better place to do it than here in the heart of Tennessee and country music history. 

We were only given an hour and a half or so to write our song, so as I kept rearranging words, I glanced at the clock often.

Finally, they told us to upload our lyrics to a shared Google doc. From here, our songwriter for the afternoon simply looked at the lyrics, came up with a melody, and then sang each song for us. 

It was one of the most amazing processes I have ever watched and I was impatient as I waited to hear how my song would sound.

When it was finally my turn, I got my phone ready to record and I listened as a very special part of my story became an actual song. 

It may very well be the only song I ever write – but it captured a piece of my history that I am still trying to understand. I keep circling back to this place and the people who were part of my life while I was in it. I have dreams of driving down the street past the bowling alley. I will have random flashes to the church steps and the bells tolling in the background. I remember getting into my mom’s Daihatsu in the Safeway parking lot after grocery shopping. 

I suppose many of the great country songs ever written come from the same place of trying to make sense of the past, while dealing with its ramifications on the present. 

• Who would I be if I had never left that place? 
• Would I have made the same mistakes?
• Would I have the same list of accomplishments?

I don’t like to live in the what if mindset, because I know that my life has played out the way it was supposed to. I love the people that God brought into my life that are still part of it. I appreciate the people who came into, and left, my life as nothing more than lessons. 

I guess the reason I wrote my song about a part of my life that I can never change is because there is a part of me that will always wonder. 

I didn’t want to leave that place. I always wanted to go back after we left, but I was young and I wasn’t in control of those choices.

Part of the chorus of the song goes:

I’ve been searching for that feeling, wondering if it will ever come around.

The song is more than just about my hometown, it’s about that desire to feel safe, and to trust, and to feel complete – in a place and with people who genuinely accept you. 

I’ve had that feeling throughout my life off and on, but in the place where I grew up, it’s largely all I knew.

It’s a very idealized way to look at it now, but as I continue to navigate this new chapter in my life, I continue to search for that feeling and wonder if I will ever truly feel that way about any place or any one again. Waco certainly feels like home, but a city can only ever be just a city without community. 

As the search continues, I just hope that my words will land for people who need to hear them, or need to write some song lyrics of their own. 

❤