Dustin Welch, Super Rooster Music (SESAC); Zander Cox, Uh-What Music (SESAC)
I remember the time when we last spoke
We were standing round talking having a smoke
You said you were leaving, or gonna try
Then you shook my hand and we said goodbye
I hope your journey is safe, my friend
And paradise is where it ends
The pain in our hearts won’t go away
I know I’ll miss you everyday
Chorus
And I know that we’ll all meet again
Though I don’t know where and I don’t know when
Friends like these, they never die
Even when you say goodbye
Please don’t hear our troubled sigh
Heed not our anguished cry
Don’t worry bout us in all our grief
Just close your eyes my friend and rest in peace
Repeat Chorus
Now it’s hard to believe that you are really gone
Though your spirit will always live on
With us all, you’ll always be
In our hearts and our memories
Repeat Chorus
Dustin Welch: lead vocals, acoustic guitar; Jeremy Nail: electric guitar, background vocals; Scotty Bucklin: organ; Trisha Keefer: violin; Steve Bernal: bass, background vocals; Eldridge Goins: drums, background vocals
The words of this song were not written by myself or my co-writer, Zander Cox. In fact, I don’t even know the guys name who wrote them. He is not a musician or a writer beyond this particular piece of work. He is an old friend of Zander’s and wrote a poem in response to the death of several friends of theirs. From what I understand, there were five people living in a house in Las Vegas, all killed in a drug deal gone wrong. I don’t know what made him finally write about it, but I know how powerful it can be to write about tragedy. He formulated it perfectly, clear and direct and heartfelt. I get chills singing this song all the time.
Zander hired me back in ’06 to play banjo and resonator guitar in his punk rock band, Scotch Greens. They flew me to Los Angeles, rehearsed for three days and then we piled in a van and drove straight from LA to Madison, WI (a 41 hour drive) to embark on a three month tour through the US as support act for Flogging Molly and in Europe for the Rev. Horton Heat. Later that year, we drove from Denver straight through to Asbury Park, NJ (44 hours) to begin a month and a half on the Warped Tour. Every night, after finishing our set, we would have to drive anywhere from two to eight hours in order to get to the next town to check-in to the festival by eight in the morning, rarely ever seeing the inside of a hotel room. The tolls of touring under those conditions would eventually lead to our demise. However for that brief amount of time we did manage to make it last, boy was it incredible! Every once in a while in those days, Zander would pull this song out, even though we never felt it was quite finished. It always stuck with me. There was an inherent power to the lyric which moved people. I revised his melody, altered some of the phrasing, and came up with this arrangement. To me, it stands out as a tribute to friendship and the bonds we form which even death cannot break.