Singled Out: Candace Hastings' Come Home

Americana star Candace Hastings just released her brand new album "Soft Place to Land" and to celebrate we asked her to tell us about the song "Come Home." Here is the story:

I wrote "Come Home" as an exercise in a songwriting class that I took from one of the best songwriters I know, Adam Carroll, a few years ago. I had a terrible case of writer's block, and I was hoping that working with Adam would inspire me.

He gave us the prompt to write a song in the form of a letter. Not earth-shattering, but it occurred to me that people don't really write letters anymore. My generation might be the last of the letter writers, before email and text took over.

That idea stayed with me because letters carry a kind of weight that other forms of communication don't. Letters make me think of distance, of thinking of someone who is far away, and the act of writing on the page. As I worked through the prompt, I thought about letters I had read; letters I had sent. My ex-husband wrote me a letter every day when he was on deployment in the Navy. It was always on thin paper to save postage, and the envelope always looked the same, with his distinct handwriting on the address line. The news in the letters was often routine, just like in "Come Home," but in a letter, you can hold someone's handwriting to your heart.

"Come Home" is about a person whose partner has left, in the barest sense of the word. Without a trace. Ranch life goes on, no matter who gets left behind. The work, the animals, the crops, the weather. But the loneliness goes on as well, and it makes us hard.

The song asks listeners to be patient. At first, we are inside the routine of a life that has to keep going, even after someone disappears from it. It isn't until the chorus that we understand what has happened, and what the speaker is finally willing to say:

"I know you had your reasons for packing up and leaving,
Can't divine the stars from their courses
But I can write a letter,
And say 'Baby, won't you please come home?'"

The line, "Can't divine the stars from their courses," is an allusion to a poem in one of my favorite poetry collections, Graining the Mare: The Poetry of Ranch Women, edited and with photographs by Teresa Jordan. The poem, "Epitaph," is by Margot Liberty:

"She never shook the stars, from their appointed courses,
But she loved good men,
And she rode good horses."

In "Come Home," the speaker can't control what has happened. But they can do one human, deliberate thing: write a letter. The song tells a story of the moment when someone who has been made hard by loneliness decides to be vulnerable. It's about having the strength to stop living inside the stalemate and finally say the thing that has been waiting to be said: "I can write a letter, and say, 'Baby, would you please come home.'"

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here

Singled Out: Candace Hastings' Call Your Mama

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