January 13, 2023

HS24 - TOAST She Wants Results

Songs arrive.

It was after midnight, and Thomas and I were sitting in the living room of my old house, down a long gravel road deep in the woods of Chatham county. The Haw River snaked down the bottom of our property, moving slow. At night, the sky was so dark and clear you could see all the stars shining brightly through the tree tops. The wood floors in the house added their own color to any sound we made, and eventually the quietude of the place started to show up in the songs.

I don’t remember sitting down to write “She Wants Results.” I remember starting to play the riff and Thomas lifting it up. Lyrically, it arrived 90% done the first time we played it. It was as if a channel opened up, and we just pulled the song down out of the sky.

Some songs will do that. They land on you. Others you have to wrestle with and wring them out. But the best feeling is when they arrive, floating almost in full bloom, and carry you away.

The version of “She Wants Results” that I have for you today is a live recording. We rarely ever played this song on tour, so I’m grateful that someone taped it. It takes me right back to the woods when I hear it, and to a time when I had the best job in the world—just to sit in the pre-dawn hours and play music with my pal.

I still wonder, as I listen back to this tune now, who the guy really is who is singing—the thief, coming to terms with his past, wanting to change, wanting to start over again. And the lie he tells himself: she wants results.

I hear the river calling me.

Yours,

JR