Sheddio Sessions - Simple Things [Video]
One of the earliest Pantones songs was built around the pipe dream of a family home, a concept I thought out of our reach. Shortly after this song was written, it became a sort of reality.
One day in the early aughts, I was out for a walk with my family. It was a warm late spring evening and the smell of lilacs oozed from a row of homes that each had them planted out front. The smell reminded me of my childhood and the lilac bush that grew off the corner of our front porch. The aroma was a sickly sweet perfume of pure spring.
My wife Kimmy remarked rather casually, “It would be great to plant a lilac bush or something in our own yard.”
At the time we were living in a nondescript first floor, two bedroom apartment in the suburbs. The building was safe, soulless, and dull. We couldn’t paint walls, or make improvements or even attach furniture to the walls. Yet we both knew that with our salaries, questionable credit and no down payment, buying a home was pipe dream at best. Neither of us were jaded about the issue, per se, but there was a resignation to a life most likely lived in rental units until we could find a better option.
A few days later, I sat down with a guitar and began messing around with a three chord progression that sounded halfway interesting. Slowly, a vocal melody began to appear for the progression, and my brain began searching for placeholder words. It’s a practice I sometimes use where, in searching for the melody and phrasing, you improvise words or use gibberish to carve out the rhythm and meter that fits the bill. The first few phrases were me naming things from around the room. I glanced up, caught a tree branch in the window from the corner of my eye, and out came, “I can smell lilacs from here.”
In a flash the lilacs became a symbol of home ownership in my mind. I began to envision all of the things we could do with the freedom of our own home and yard. It might have been an unattainable dream in my mind, but I could still write a song about the American dream of home ownership. Yet, I was not interested in portraying a house of beauty, excess, or wealth. Instead, I imagined a small, humble home somewhere separate where our family could find its own independence and freedom.
There was no way for me to know that within a year of writing the tune, my parents would help us buy my great-grandparents old house after a death in the family. We spent a spring cleaning it up and renovating it, all thanks to my folks. They bought the house and sold it back to us on a land contract, all while paying for the costs of the renovations and doing work every weekend and damned near every night. The song became an example of wish fulfillment, my hope for the future of my family, and the debt which we will never be able to truly repay my parents.
Our actual home is not “way out in the country” as the song portrays, but the small city lot on which our house lies is our own little slice of heaven. Despite the pitfalls of home ownership, see my recent plumbing ordeal for proof, we’ve been thrilled to call this place home for more than two full decades.
Each time I play this song, I am reminded of how fortunate am to have a home and a family safe within it. It’s also a reminder of the sacrifices my folks made for us to have this dream.
This is a story of independence, freedom, and having a place to truly call home.
Cheers,
Matty C
Simply beautiful ❤️
Beautiful!! Love the story and the song!