The Story Behind The Weight I Didn't Know
Last year I released “Season to Be Grateful.” When Thanksgiving came around again, I wanted to explore gratitude without simply writing another list of things to be thankful for.
I had been keeping notes about moments that caught my attention, some important and some almost comically ordinary. When I read them together, a pattern stood out. There was plenty still happening in my life, plenty I wanted to do, but I had begun to notice a different relationship to the pressure that comes with keeping everything moving.
I kept thinking about how a certain pace can follow you for years until it becomes the background of your life. The idea interested me because it didn’t need a dramatic event to make it worth exploring. I wanted the song to live in familiar moments, with the meaning arriving naturally rather than being announced.
Creative Notes
I considered four directions drawn from the gratitude notes and chose this one because the quieter realization stayed with me. The first lyric draft used everyday scenes instead of building the song around one big turning point.
RoyRoy Genkins was the first musical direction I tried. I wasn’t initially sure I was in the mood for that sound, but I decided to keep this release in the RoyRoy catalog. I also had the first cover concept reworked after comparing it with existing RoyRoy artwork, moving toward the familiar mountain setting, weathered finish, and cream serif typography.
Lyrics
I used to wake before the morning With a whole day in my head Every loose end had a voice Every voice could pull me out of bed
I got good at being ready For the fire before the flame And after years of holding steady I forgot it had a name
You can live beside a highway Till you barely hear the sound You don’t know how loud it’s been Until the traffic dies down
There wasn’t any thunder No moment I could name No great weight upon my shoulders That I watched somebody take
Just the sunlight through the branches And a day still full of things I reached for that old feeling And couldn’t find the strings
I didn’t know how much I’d carried Till I found the room to breathe
The plane came in at three a.m. Another night gone wrong I had a hundred ways to fight it And I knew them all by heart
But I watched the lights along the runway Let the hours come and go And somewhere in that quiet I felt something I didn’t know
Nothing there had changed much The night was what it was But I wasn’t keeping score Of what it might have cost
There wasn’t any thunder No moment I could name No great weight upon my shoulders That I watched somebody take
Just the sunlight through the branches And a day still full of things I reached for that old feeling And couldn’t find the strings
I didn’t know how much I’d carried Till I found the room to breathe
I haven’t lost the hunger Haven’t laid my dreams aside There’s still a thousand things worth building Still a thousand things to try
But there’s time to hear somebody Time to look beyond the road Time to give a little more Than I could when I held it all
And I wonder how much living I was doing underneath All the things I thought depended On the strength of only me
There wasn’t any thunder No voice that called me home Just a quiet kind of freedom I had never thought to own
And the sunlight through the branches Fell on everything the same Nothing in the world was waiting For me to give it all a name
I didn’t know how much I’d carried Till I found the room to breathe
Somewhere in the stillness Something I’d forgotten came through
I thought I’d lost the weight of living
But I found more of me, too
Credits
- Creative direction
- Joe Hackman
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