Last October, when I started making a list of Louisiana adventures I could do for my Tuesday column (in its 30th iteration this week), “help write a song” was on the list. Jodi James jumped to the top of my mind because I connected with her music so much. I reached out and had the outing set up quickly.
We met on a cold, rainy day back in early December at her home in Burnside. In one sense, the experience far exceeded my expectations. The act of collaborating creatively was a beautiful thing. We built on each other’s ideas. I loved being able to connect the many random thoughts in my head to her music.
In another sense, this adventure turned out to be much more complicated than expected — hence the nearly five-month wait on writing the column. Songwriters and musicians know that sometimes once a song is written, things become more tangled.
Clay Parker and Jodi James’ ‘The Lonsomest Sound that Can Sound’
The first time I ever heard Jodi James and Clay Parker sing, I immediately recognized that they wrote, played and sang the kind of music that gets in my brain and makes itself comfortable. Their song, “Nothing at All,” was on a continuous loop in my life for most of 2024.
The song we wrote that day doesn’t even have a name. At this point, its only recording is on my phone. When we finished that day, we were both so pleased with it. In the weeks that followed our lovely time together, she decided she needed time to sit with the song.
She messaged me this week that it has bubbled back toward the top of her mind, and she’s starting to think about it again. Even if the song never goes further than my phone recording, that alone provides plenty of evidence of James’ beautiful voice and guitar playing.
Listening to the song now is a bit of insight into the magic of that day.
James and I briefly met twice before that cold December day. When I arrived at her house with sandwiches, we ate lunch and then got right to work on writing a song — made possible by her sheer talent, matched by my enthusiasm and love of words.
I had no idea how to start the process of writing a song. Fortunately, James did.
She picked one of the many little riffs that had been rolling around in her head, played it on her guitar, and we were off. She told me how musical phrases come into her head. She usually records them and saves them — in this case, for a rainy day.
Clay Parker and Jodi James release their new record, ‘Your Very Own Dream,’ on Friday.
To write the song, back in December, James and I settled on a rhyme scheme. We worked through the song’s narrator’s perspective. We had to agree on the chorus and figured out where the bridge would go.
James has serious musical chops. I was able to contribute specific words and ideas — including the opening line based on the view out my bathroom window, where I like to watch the morning sun. I was also thinking a lot about horizons back then and was able to work that in, too.
She added the beautiful line to start the second verse about “an achingly familiar sky and shadow.” I thought of the whimsical decision-making process involving picking petals from a daisy and the mouse in the nursery rhyme who ran up the clock — and was able to incorporate those ideas into the song.
Singer-songwriters Clay Parker and Jodi James will be heading to New Orleans for Jazz Fest.
Here are the lyrics we wrote that day:
I can almost see the lake this time of winter / Against the new bright morning sun / And they say the horizon goes forever / but from where I stand, I can’t see one.
CHORUS: So I turn the page / To a modern age / Shelter from the cold / I was never bold.
There’s an achingly familiar sky and shadow / And another April gone away / And the birds are singing songs that I don’t yet know / And the daisy petals say come what may.
Chorus repeats.
The clock strikes twilight, the mouse runs down / Feel the pull, it comes on strong / One too many times around / The years are short and the days are long.
Chorus repeats.
Clay Parker and Jodi James
Whether our song ever reaches a wider audience or simply stays a secret between us, the joy of building something new with someone who understands the language of music and memory was a reminder of how art connects us, even when the final product remains unfinished.
