Powerline Valley (piano demo)

The take keeps its own slate, a light switched on and the title said into the room, and what follows is the fullest version of the song that exists. One long telling holds the whole courtship, nineteen and twenty one under the powerlines, his softness lost at fifteen, first love bleeding out on the seats of his car, the valley of lines a way out they drive past every day.

September on the backroads turns over into the song’s black centre, his father found hanging by the belt that left the marks he never explains, the pills, the ghosting, the blows she keeps like gifts. It ends him in his daddy’s field, and what is left is the promise she made, to let the powerlines take her somewhere for the both of them. The take stumbles, swears, and starts the meeting over, and given the chance she would do it all again.