Wednesday's Words - Streets You Never Went Down

I live in a small town - around 2000 residents. We are currently the fastest growing community in our state and you can see evidence of that everywhere you look.  In the past year or so we got a new gas station/convenience store, Dollar General, and True Value Hardware.  We are livin' large now, people. Thankfully, our house still backs up to a corn field which makes "city" living tolerable for this farm girl. We moved off an acreage almost 12 years ago and I still miss it.  But I do love this little town.  


My regular running path takes me up and down its streets, through the park, and across our busiest intersection which is currently home to the only stop light in town. I am a creature of habit so I could probably run this route blindfolded. However, one day I chose a different route, going down a street I had never even been on before.  Not in 12 years. Keep in mind, this town is tiny.  I could easily go up and down every street in its limits in a few hours.  So why haven't I?  I guess it's that creature of habit thing.  

For some reason, the simple act of going down a different street in my town that day set my songwriter wheels in motion.  I wasn't sure where the idea was headed, but I thought there was something there.

Working title: Streets I Never Went Down.

Was it simply a song about life in a small town?  Was it about missed opportunities?  Interesting people I hadn't yet crossed paths with?  A story song about google maps?  I wasn't sure, but it was an idea worth chasing.  

During that particular season, I was writing pretty regularly with a couple of writers named Donna King and Lee Black.  I shared the title/idea with them, but there wasn't much more to share, other than the possible options I saw for where we could go with it.  It was one of those writing sessions where we all  threw out possibilities, tried a few different approaches, and finally landed on something that felt good.  The biggest issue in our rewriting discussions was about pronouns. I have several emails we sent back and forth to each other about pronouns. HA!  If memory serves, we had to revisit this one a couple times before we were convinced we had it right.  The whole process felt like co-writing at its best, simply because of the give-and-take, the excitement about how the song came together, and ending up with something we loved.  

This song is about being acutely aware that we are all once choice away from a very different set of circumstances. (If you don't think that's true, or that it's true for your kids, well, I'd love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you sometime.) The song is about the decisions we make in a single moment, the occasional wondering what might have been, and the gratitude for the fact that even if we do make some poor choices along the way, God has the final say in where those choices lead us.

STREETS YOU NEVER WENT DOWN
Lee Black / Donna King / Gina Boe

VERSE 1
There's a hairpin turn on River Road
Twisted metal from a whiskey haze
That could've been you but it wasn't
'Cause you pushed that drink away

CHORUS
Doors you never opened
Shoes you never wore
Ships you let sail without you
And you know you're better for it now
All those streets you never went down

VERSE 2
Splittin' hearts and kids and holidays
From an empty night in a stranger's bed
That could've been you but it wasn't 
'Cause you chose love instead of regret

CHORUS

VERSE 3
Just a broken man who lost it all
Followed the devil down to a dead end
It could've been you but it wasn't
'Cause God got the last Amen

FINAL CHORUS
Doors you never opened
Shoes you never wore
Ships you let sail without you
And you know you're better for it now
And nothing you lost compares to everything you found
​All those streets you never went down


 

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