GRAYSON HUGH

(This is my song of gratitude. It was the day before Thanksgiving, after we had just had our kitchen painted, and Polly had purchased a new glass table and blue chairs. The paint had dried and we had taken the tarp off the new table and brought the new chairs back in. Besides those things, the room was empty. It had magical kind of flat echo which somehow made my mind extra clear. White drinking my black French Roast coffee at this new table, I wrote this song, rather quickly, in one of my college-ruled notebooks. Months later, when I heard, for the first time, the finished mix of this song, Glen Tippett's tenor solo, and the lush layers of my Hammond B3 organ, and the words that had come to me so easily, I put my head down on the desk and cried. "Thank you", I said, to the room and the universe. Thank you Lord.")

THANK YOU LORD
words & music by Grayson Hugh


I was living

in that house behind the hedge

just a mile from the ocean

I was dangling on the ledge

all direction down to nowhere

it was all of my accord

I was running out of money

and running out of all my hope and heartbeats

Thank You Lord

 

I was dreaming of a life

trying to escape

from the streets of New York City

Carolina to the Cape

I was living above the barroom

it was all I could afford

I was running out reasons

fading as the days turned into seasons

Thank You Lord

 

It was out of there You led me

my journey had begun

I needed every stumble,

drink and failure, every one

and I never want to go back

to those days when I ignored

the gift of life You gave me

and from that dark and lonely place You saved me

Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord

Thank You Lord, Thank You Lord

© 2015 by Swamp Yankee Music/ASCAP