This is a song for my wife, Sara. We got married in 2015 on a warm Friday night not far from where we both grew up and continue to live. Your wedding is one of the only times in your life where so many people that you care about and that have shaped you into the person you are – show up together at the same place at the same time to celebrate love. And there was no shortage of love. We were fortunate to have had a barn full of our closest friends and family in attendance to mark the occasion.

Our wedding song was unconventional but was one that to me is one of the best songs ever written. ’Picture In a Frame’ by Tom Waits. I love how simple and fragile the production is, but it’s so powerful at the same time.

The bridge is simply….

‘I’m gonna love you til the wheels come off….oh yeah.’

Concepts/First Drafts

An quote that’s stuck with me from Linford Detweiler is “Songs have always been my safe containers for pain.” – But I’d add that songs are great containers for memory and I really tried to tie in our own personal experience to this one, while leaving just enough room where the listener can hang their own hat on it, or map it to a special point in their life. So the verses were written without too much trouble – but I ran out of writer’s karma before I could figure out a chorus that I was happy with. So I waited…

I brought this idea to Ohio where I traveled for a weekend songwriting retreat. Sometimes a change of pace and place is what provides the opportunity to change directions or catch a song as it floats by. 

It was late at night and I was noodling around after most of the other writers had turned in, hoping that something would magically jump into my head…and it did. I just needed to take a page from Mr. Waits and keep it simple. 

His song was now a song that I could hang my own hat on. It had become a part of this amazing moment our lives, and now I could take a pice of that moment-a piece of that song, and make it my own. And that’s how the chorus and bridge were finished.

Here is the actual first demo with that chorus immediately after I wrote it, recorded late at night on my iPhone at Nowhere Else in 2016.