Take Me Home Explained

This is one of the first songs I ever wrote that has endured. There was a lot of music I wrote in high school and quite a few miscelaneous songs that I wrote then and after, but I never took them seriously. This was the first song to get performed from an actual effort at songwriting. It was written for After the Dawn and was originally recorded for our self-titled EP cassette, which was recorded and produced in the student radio station, WVOE, of Northwestern College.

On this album, I tried to present the song the way I remembered writing it, sitting alone in a lounge in the dorms, with a beat-up old acoustic guitar and a notebook, with one exeption. In this version I added a Bass part, because A.) When I wrote it, I could hear the Bass part in my head, and B.) Because of the finger picking, without a Bass the guitar part sounds pretty thin. It is stripped of the electric guitars and drums and other parts and is done unvarnished, so to speak.

I wrote parts of this before, during and after one of my recurrent migraines. The opening lines when I was walking to class one morning and the air just smelled new and fresh. The whole verse came at once and I hummed it, albeit to a slightly different tune, for the next two days straight.

Some of the more depressing and plaintive lyrics came a day after that when I was hit with a migraine. The following day, I was a bit depressed and I grabbed a guitar at around 2:00 am and went to an end lounge to play around and try to make myself feel better. The song was put together there and hasn't really changed significantly since.

Take Me Home

In the hour I first believed
With the power I first received
All the world was new
Bright as a morning mist

But age and life they wear away
And thoughts turn to gray
And words and deeds betray
The one who Judas kissed

Oh hold me Lord
I can’t stand

Take me home
I want to know your grace
Take me home
Take me from this place

Wave on wave bear me down
I gasp for air as I drown
And my grip upon the Rock
Begins to fray

I may stumble and I may fall
You Oh Lord are above it all
My soul is yours
Come what may

Oh hold me Lord
I can’t stand

When this race is run
When this work is done
When they all see
When they all see
The Son
Then bring me home
Then bring me home

Take Me Home - MP3 128k



04-Take.mp3

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