Story
This was one of the first songs I wrote after we moved to Nashville. As I started writing it, I thought it would be a love song about the house we bought in East Nashville—and a love song for what I’d found in Nashville. While I was writing the song, I kept learning more about the previous owner of the house. Penny Campbell, who I learned died in our house, was an LGBTQ activist and mentor to so many, at a time in the South where doing so was dangerous. The writing process guided me into more of a meditation of her life, life in general, legacy, and what a home retains long after we’ve moved on.
Lyrics
Written by Jesse Correll
© Indigo & Silk Songs 222 (ASCAP)
Scarlet cardinals on full display
Watch the baby bunny rabbit jump through the gate
Sit beneath the dogwood as it sways in my
Backyard Thursday
All those years in New York looking out on concrete, glass, and steel
Never knowing just how good this change of pace would feel
Penny Campbell used to own this place
She planted gardens, filled up every green space
I can feel her good vibrations to this day in my
Backyard Thursday
All those people she mentored who needed help and love
Did she know those fruits would come to bear long after she’d been called above
Oh my God, those things we leave behind
What we feel but cannot see
How beautiful, these gifts we bring
Invisible legacies
Some years from now I’ll be gone
Someone new will sit in this here lawn
Will they hear the echoes of my song in their
Backyard Thursday