Mountain Echoes

Lyrics

[Intro ☕][Energy: Low]
(dulcimer alone — single notes, mountain air between them)
(fiddle enters, barely audible, like something remembered)
(long space before the first word)

I used to know
Every door
On that road

[Verse 1 ☕][Energy: Low]
Summer boy
Coming down from Illinois
Every house
Was home

Daddy's aunts and uncles
On their porches waiting
Cousins running loud
In the red dirt and the kudzu
And every single one of them
Knew my name
Without being told

Grandma Nora Lou
Pawpaw Grover on the porch
His brother down the holler
Their people all around
Five miles of family
Every face
A face that claimed me
Before I even knocked

[Pre-Chorus][Energy: Low-Mid]
(dulcimer lifts slightly, fiddle rises aching)
I didn't know then
What it meant
To be known like that

To walk into a room
After years gone by
And have someone say
There he is
Like no time
Had passed at all

[Chorus ☕][Energy: Mid]
(fuller but still restrained — grief held inside warmth)
Mountain echoes
That's what they are now
Mountain echoes
Living in my chest

Every voice that claimed me
On that Black Oak Ridge Road
Every hand that held me
Every porch I blessed

Mountain echoes
Carried out of Carolina
Mountain echoes
In an Illinois heart

They're gone from every doorway
But they never really left me
Mountain echoes
Is what they are

[Verse 2 ☕][Energy: Low]
(drops back — dulcimer alone under the voice)
The houses are still standing
I could drive that road tomorrow
Someone lives behind
Each one of those old doors

But they don't know my face
And I don't know their names
And that's nobody's fault
It's just
What time
Restores

What once was full of voices
Calling out my name
Is quiet now
In the way
Only absence
Makes a place go quiet

And I stand here
In the middle of my Illinois life
A pawpaw now myself
Carrying what I cannot
Hand to anyone
Who'd recognize
The weight

[Pre-Chorus][Energy: Low-Mid]
(fiddle rises, aching and slow)
But I know what I was given
On that red dirt road

I know what it means
To be loved before you earn it
To be known
Before you know yourself

And I carry that
I carry all of it
North Carolina
In an Illinois
Chest

[Chorus ☕][Energy: Mid]
Mountain echoes
That's what they are now
Mountain echoes
Living in my chest

Every voice that claimed me
On that Black Oak Ridge Road
Every hand that held me
Every porch I blessed

Mountain echoes
Carried out of Carolina
Mountain echoes
In an Illinois heart

They're gone from every doorway
But they never really left me
Mountain echoes
Is what they are

[Bridge 😭][Energy: Low]
(everything drops — dulcimer alone)
(single notes, vast mountain silence between them)

Pawpaw Grover
(I hear you still)

Grandma Nora Lou
(I hear you still)

Daddy's people
All up and down that holler
(I hear you still)

(fiddle enters — one long aching note)

You knew me
Before I knew myself
You loved me
Before I had anything
Worth loving

And now I'm the pawpaw
Standing where you stood
Trying to be
What you were
To me

For the ones
Who'll carry me
When I'm gone

[Bridge 🔥][Energy: Mid]
(fuller — not explosive, just warmer, like a fire coming up)
So I don't go back
To grieve what isn't there

I carry what was there
Forward
Into everything

Into every morning
In this Illinois life
Into every moment
With my granddaughters
On my knee

When they hear me laugh
They're hearing something
That came down
From a Carolina holler
On a red dirt road
Five miles deep
In Harrington country

They just don't know it yet

[Final Chorus ☕][Energy: Mid-High]
(dulcimer and fiddle together — mournful but lifting)
(the grief and the gratitude held equally)
Mountain echoes
That's what they are now
Mountain echoes
Living in my chest

Every voice that claimed me
On that Black Oak Ridge Road
Every hand that held me
Every porch I blessed

Mountain echoes
Still singing out of Carolina
Mountain echoes
Never really gone

I carry every one of them
Into everything I am
Mountain echoes

Still
Going
On

[Outro ☕][Energy: Low][Fade Out]
(dulcimer returns alone — same opening phrase)
(fiddle hums one last note and releases)
(long silence between each word)

Pawpaw Grover

Grandma Nora Lou

There he is

(long silence)

...there he is