Americana Highways brings you this premiere of Greg Owens’ song “Come Back Home,” from his forthcoming album Life, Love, and Southern Sadness due to be out on Sept 17. The album was produced by Greg Owens and Taylor Lonardo, engineered and mixed by Taylor Lonardo and mastered by Jon Estes.
Musicians on the album are Greg Owens on guitars, harmonica, and vocals; Matt Heller on drums; Taylor Lonardo on bass; Skylar Gregg on backing vocals; Neil Jones on pedal steel and Jon Estes on piano and organ. This song has an ease to it musically that allows the pain of breakup to release under its reassurance. There’s something special about it.
“Come Back Home” was written over the course of 10 years. I started the song around 2009. I was in my early 20s and was writing about a failed relationship. As the song suggests, I was in a pretty rough place and couldn’t even clean my house, much less finish the song. It remained just a half of a verse and the chorus and presumably would stay that way.
However, in 2015, I was going through my old voice memos and came across what I had recorded of this song. I always liked the lyrics and thought the song had potential. I think I finished the first verse and wrote the pre-chorus at this time. Unfortunately, that’s all that got accomplished. The song was again shelved.
Then, in late 2019 I again stumbled upon the song in my voice memos. I still liked it, but I was such a different person than I was 10 years ago. I was married and extremely happy. I think I was able to finish the song because I was able to look back at myself and write as if I was writing about someone else. I was able to take myself out of the equation and just write. Sometimes it just hurts too much to write about your life when you’re in that moment. Exploring those feelings makes it too real. Like an injury that hurts worse when you look at it and see the blood, so you look away. Sometimes it’s easier to write about the scar than the wound.
I’m thankful I made those voice memos and was able to go back and finish the song. It’s one of my favorites I’ve written. It’s also the first song I’ve ever recorded harmonica for which makes it kind of special. — Greg Owens
Artwork photo by Alexis Faye
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