That was Ivy. Absolutely no ego. Her only aim was about making great music.
“You got it,” I said. “You have someone in mind to sing it with?”
“Jack Wilder’s manager reached out to me a while back. I told Rhett I’d love to sing with him, but I’ve been on tour.”
“Who’s Rhett?” I asked.
“Rhett Lawson. His manager. They’ve been together since the beginning. Grew up in the same trailer park up in Washington state.”
“His voice would be a great complement to yours,” I said. “And duets are hot right now.”
“Not as hot as Jack Wilder,” Ivy said, fanning herself.
We were pulled away from our conversation by Wes announcing he was ready for us.
“Let’s get a perfect track so we can take the rest of the night off,” Ivy said.
“Right behind you.”
We spent the next hour recording the song. By the time Margaret called down that dinner was ready, we had a fully realized version of the song and went upstairs feeling jubilant.
After dinner,Margaret shooed Ivy and me out of the kitchen and out to the back porch. Wes turned on the outdoor heaters and told us to get to work.
I hauled Georgia out of her case and into my lap where she belonged. Ivy took out her guitar, a Martin 000-15M, mahogany all the way through. She’d changed into a pair of jeans and a sweater, trading her boots for cozy socks. She settled onto one of the rocking chairs, tucking her right foot under her left thigh like she often did when we wrote together.
“Play what you got,” I said.
She dropped her eyes to the strings and played a simple chord progression of G-to-C-to-D-to-Em, nothing complicated and very traditional country.
Then she sang:
My daddy said Tennessee’s your heart
Little girl, no matter how far you go
The whispering pines still call your name
But go chase those dreams
Knowing you can always come back home
She lifted her fingers from the strings and looked up. “That’s it. I don’t even know what it means. Like what’s the story here?”
I strummed the same chord progression by ear, playing it back to her at a slower pace, the G chord voiced higher up the neck, giving it more ring.
“Tell me how this verse came to you,” I said. “Do you remember?”
“I was brushing my teeth in some hotel. I’d been on tour for months by then. I’d wake up every day not even sure what city I was in. And the lines just came to me. I rushed to write them down and found the music behind them. After that, nothing.”
“You were feeling lonely?” I asked.
“Yeah. And homesick.”
She played it again. I played underneath her, finding notes within the spaces—small phrases that echoed her melody back, bent slightly toward longing.
“I don’t really have a home these days.” She was quiet for a moment, hunched over her guitar. “Maybe home’s a person I haven’t found yet.”
“Yes, there’s something.” A vision of Seraphina’s face on the boat earlier that day flashed through my mind. “So this is a love song maybe?”
