“Hittin’ Stones” - a song about sentineling
Recorded in Guadalupe Mountain National Park. It was such an amazingly noisy spot, but I felt drawn to give it a shot. Something about the mountain of course, but also being by the road and those trucks and the relationship of creation and distraction… it’s all in there somehow, and what I love so much about a field recording.
Story Pairing
I consider this a co-write with my late grandfather. I’m not much of a co-writer sort of guy, but I feel like this was an exception that I would make 100 times over.
When I was a kid, 8-10yrs old, I spent a lot of time going to work with my dad and grandpa. They started an excavating operation while running a diary farm. I don’t want to mess up the story, so I am going to call my dad right now (4:50pm in Stephenville, TX, working in a coffeeshop) and get the story straight… be right back…
**Backstory
When my dad was around 10 himself, old enough to be running tractors on a family farm, is when they got their first piece of heavy equipment. They were always fighting mud with the tractors, trying to harvest crops and do farm chores is a lot harder with a tractor getting stuck in the mud. So my grandfather decided to buy a little international bulldozer. With tracks they could glide right over the mud, and with a PTO on the back they could make short work of other chores like chopping up corn for feed. They started to get some requests from neighbors to do some odd jobs for them. They didn’t have a trailer to haul the dozer, but a cousin in the lumber business had one that he would loan out occasionally. The side jobs continued and more equipment was needed. In high school my dad got a dump truck, before he even had a license to drive it. Then together they bought a backhoe. My uncle got a dump truck too, and slowly they started getting more pieces of equipment. The cows got sold, but the side jobs didn’t go anywhere. The biggest purchase that changed the game for them was a CAT track-hoe made in Germany. They went up to Cleveland to look at it, and it was solid and well priced because of the lack of popularity for something like that built somewhere else. They left after looking it over, unsure if it was right for them. On the way home they were talking back and forth about it, wondering if they should get it. At that time they had a big car phone in a bag the size of a car battery. My dad remembers them calling the dealer from halfway home, telling them they’d take it, and feeling like kings wheeling and dealing on “mobile” phones over big equipment. Now there wasn’t a job they couldn’t do, and nothing can dig a hole like a track-hoe.
**I should collect stories from my parents and family more often. How lovely to sit on the phone with someone you love and hear the excitement in their voice as they retell important memories.
Back to the song…
So when I plugged into this family business, I wasn’t good at much beyond shoveling corners in basement footers (where hitting a stone shook every bone in your arms) and riding with Grandpa to go dump dirt or get loads of stone. On one of those rides, in between him chirping at buddies on his CB, he let me know how if anyone messed with our family, he could take care of it. He said he could dig the deepest hole anyone has ever seen. As a single digit grandson, that’s a boast that you remember. A big man, a bigger personality, dropping gears on the highway, and roaring right alongside the wind. It’s the kind of man you aspire to be and the kind you can’t help but hold on to in memory.
He passed the day before my 11th birthday. I got to see him a few years ago.
He visited in a dream where he and I were making coffins. That’s all the dream was, just us hanging out and doing a little woodworking project. It wasn’t a dark or scary dream, it was lighthearted time together just looking after our own. There was one part of the dream where he asked me to hand him a saw and laughed when I handed him a hammer (dream foolery, I know the difference, I swear). That’s all I really remember, I wish there was more.
When I got up I wrote this. Maybe one of 4 or 5 times I’ve written a song after a dream. I desperately wish I could find the place those come from and visit it every night. There are plenty of people I’d love to see again and write songs with.
Song Structure
Drop D
Verse: D - G - D
Chorus: A - G - D
Voice Memos
No Notebook Page
Written in 2020
Here’s a picture I took at an auction in 2024.
Lyrics
I'm only hitting stones
only hittin stones
me and grandads shovel
gonna hide away these bones
wants my blood
wants my kin
I'm only hittin stones again
I'm out here sawing pine
out here sawing pine
me and grandads handsaw
see to get along just fine
wants my blood
wants my kin
I'm our here sawing pine again
I'm out here driving nails
out hear driving nails
me and grandads gavel
drowning out heavens bells
wants my blood
wants my kin
I'm out here driving nails again
Im out here playing God
out here playing god
me and grandads bible
we always found it odd
wants my blood
wants my kin
I'm out here playing god again
I'm only hitting stones
only hitting stones
I'm only hitting stones
only hitting stones