Color Red

Song story & origins

Introduction

Color Red is the “title” cut for my Red EP (2008)—a collection I assembled right after we finally moved back to Spearfish. It was the last album I tracked on my stand-alone digital recorder (not software-based; it had that warm, almost analog feel). After this project I shifted to GarageBand/Mac. The EP gathers older songs I’d written between 1986–1996 that had lived only on cassette; to tie them together, I also wrote a new song about “red.” This is that song. Its story looks back to 1986, when Sheryl and I briefly broke our engagement—a summer apart that became clarifying for both of us and, a year later (1987), led us to marry.

Where the song came from

In ’86 we hit pause: Sheryl spent part of the summer in Iowa, then went to Grand Junction, Colorado to stay with a close friend and do the long-imagined Colorado summer she’d dreamed of since she was little. I stayed in Lubbock, Texas, counseling at a camp in New Mexico—work that grew important later. We wrote and phoned; she even told me about water-skiing with friends, which I tried to take in stride while I wondered whether I’d just lost the best thing in my life. We both returned to college in Lubbock that fall; a year later we married. The lyric holds my side of that summer—waiting, worry, and the slow work of growing up.

The title started as wordplay that fit the story: Colorado literally means “color red”; Amarillo, just north of Lubbock, means “yellow.” “Red” could signal love, adventure, even anger—and “yellow,” for me here, shaded toward cowardice: the wait-and-see posture I fell into while she took the active path she needed. That became the chorus’s spine: I’m Amarillo yellow / She’s Colorado color red.

One small fiction in the lyric: I didn’t actually drive to Grand Junction that summer (I did take a bus to see her in Iowa right at the start). The verse about the Toyota truck is the life I imagined living—jumping in, declaring love at her door. I did buy a blue Toyota Land Cruiser at summer’s end, and when we were both back in Lubbock, that and the Dodge 024 became “our” vehicles. The imagined drive fit the emotional truth, so it stayed.

Music and arrangement

Two strands shaped the sound. First, I built much of the EP from piano and acoustic guitar, then added mandolin—a palette I was reaching for as I was winding down the hardware recorder era. Second, I was listening to a lot of Fleet Foxes (thanks to our daughters): male harmonies, roomy reverb, and a distant, minor-key bridge where the vocal feels far away and a little indecipherable. That’s where the “I’m black and blue… don’t know what state I’m in” lines live. I close with a small a cappella male-quartet swell—I loved how the harmonies stacked, so I let them carry the fade.

What the song is saying

Sometimes the brave thing is to go (her path). Sometimes the brave thing is to wait (my path that summer), though waiting can curdle into fear. The song doesn’t romanticize either; it just tells how time and space did their work. In another version of our story we might not have found our way back—and that would have had to be okay. As it is, the “red/ yellow” metaphor names the tension and blesses the patience that brought us home. Years later, when I recorded this reflection, we’d been married 33 years and were about to be grandparents; it felt right to be grateful for a painful season that clarified everything.

Context & timing notes

2008 Red EP. Recorded just after our move back to Spearfish; last project before switching from a stand-alone recorder to GarageBand on Mac. A set of older songs (’86–’96) newly arranged, plus this new “red” song to anchor the theme.

Influences. Fleet Foxes’ harmonies and reverb color the vocals; the bridge leans deliberately minor and distant before the final stacked-voice coda.

A present-tense snapshot. When I told this story on a spring day, the creek by our place in Spearfish Canyon was running so high we couldn’t cross it even in a 4×4, and the wider world was in social-distancing mode—another reminder that waiting seasons come and pass.

Why it stays with me

Because it’s a small map of how love sometimes works: one person heads toward the mountains to sort out a life; the other learns to wait without collapsing. The colors helped me tell the truth about both. And the last thing you hear—those stacked voices—is exactly what the story became: harmony.

Source: New Music Memoir (1).docx