Can someone tell me what day it is? It’s Saturday? You’re kidding! I lost track of the time. Well, that’s not entirely true. It was true Monday morning, but by Thursday afternoon I think you could call it sheer laziness.

The reason I haven’t updated is because I no longer have a computer at my house and it takes some aligning of the planets to get up to my husband’s studio to update. Actually, I think now is probably a good time to end this thing. There are, of course, lots more songs I could post, but the truth is, it’s gotten a little hard for me to keep up with. Even with it being just once a week. This past Monday morning, around 2:00 am, I woke up and realized I hadn’t updated the site and I wasn’t going to be able to for several days.

I think I got a pretty good idea how my husband’s songs would be received if they ever got out there. And, in fact, there will be a time when he will make a professional cd of his songs and have them available for sale. I just don’t know when that will be and I can’t really keep posting songs until that happens. I’ll keep the site up for a while so you can still listen to the songs I’ve already posted and because the experiment is officially over, I guess the songwriter’s identity doesn’t need to be a secret anymore. So for this last song, I’m going to put up the song that made my husband, Elliott, a number-one songwriter!

This song was written by my husband around the time our daughter was born. He jotted down a few simple lines and recorded a simple melody and filed it away. Then, four years later, he had a co-write with a veteran songwriter named Walt Aldridge. Because Elliott was the lesser songwriter, he brought out all his ideas and they couldn’t seem to get any of them to go anywhere. Then, just before things got awkward, Elliott pulled out that piece of paper with a few lines jotted down on it. You can hear the rest of the story in an interview that Elliott did for a radio program called "Story Behind the Song." And, of course after that, you can listen to the song. I don’t have a recording of Elliott singing it, so you’ll be hearing Walt Aldridge’s voice, but it’s a really nice version.

Story Behind the Song

I Loved Her First

I just wanted to add that I have really enjoyed sharing my husband’s music with you. You’ve been very kind and generous with your comments and your time. I am confident Elliott’s music will find it’s place. God is doing amazing things in his life and I can’t begin to guess what He’s going to do next! Thanks for listening!

Hope everyone had an exciting and relaxing 4th of July. We, at the songwriter’s house, have spent the last two weeks at baseball games. That included the 4th. You should have seen those boys out on the field when it started to get dark. They were doing their best to concentrate on the game, but fireworks were going off in every direction. It really was cute to see them pretend they didn’t notice.

Our last game was Saturday night and when we got in the car to drive the 25 minutes to get to the ball park, the songwriter said he had a little bit of pain in his side. I asked him if he wanted me to drive, but he said it wasn’t really that bad. Maybe just something he ate. Well, by the time we got to the fields, he was doubled over in pain and wanted me to take him straight to the emergency room. We dropped off our son, told him the rest of the family would be there later to see him play and headed to the ER.

We got in pretty quick and they started running tests and giving pain medication and it wasn’t too long before they knew it was a kidney stone. Ouch! It was really hard for me to see him in that much pain. We ended up getting back home at 2 a.m. and sleeping until noon on Sunday. He’s doing much better now, though.

This morning, when I got up and started checking my e-mail, I didn’t even realize that it was Monday. I started scrambling for a song to put up and then I remembered one from several years back that I think is perfect for right now. I actually came up with the idea for it. It was a really stressful time for the songwriter and me and one afternoon I was thinking about how much I wanted to get away from it all and I said to him, "I want to go somewhere far away with you." He said, "Yeah, that would be great. You know, that would make a great song title!" And that’s all it took. Anyway, I know he’s feeling that way right about now!

He did a home version with just the instruments he’s got on his electric piano and then a Nashville version with studio musicians and a female demo singer to pitch to other artists. I think it works with a male or female singer, but of course, I like the version where he’s singing. I thought it would be interesting for you to hear the difference.

Here’s the songwriter’s original version:

And here’s the souped-up Nashville version: