Two men, a quiet kitchen, a grid-lined page — and a chorus that stopped halfway.
Before he was a legend, Alan Jackson was a small-town kid writing at the kitchen table, backing himself with a weathered guitar. His first songwriting companion was the same. Years later, they met again — to write one more. Neither knew it would be the last time.
An unplanned afternoon
His friend dropped by on a rainy day. Coffee poured, a grid-lined page spread flat, a working title penned: “If Home Had a Door.” Alan joked, “You bring the first line, I’ll bring the memories.” They laughed like distance had never happened.
Lines looking for a place to land
They rewound to their earliest Nashville nights: long drives to the outskirts, a crackling radio, a tiny stage lit by a single bulb. The first line fell: “I still know the squeak of that back-screen door.” Chords shifted, meter eased, the melody stayed honest.
The longest quiet
At the chorus, his friend stared out at the rain. “You think we wandered too far from where we started?” Alan didn’t answer at once. He plucked an F and said softly, “Maybe home is what follows us — or what we learn to carry.”
Why the song never came out
A week later, his friend’s health slipped. The session remained unfinished. The lyric lives in a notebook, mid-page, a faint coffee ring like a halo. Now and then, Alan opens it and hums the verse — as if saving the chair for a man who might walk back in.
What that day left behind
No official cut. No credits. But after that afternoon, Alan wrote leaner, truer, keeping the heart and trimming the lace. He told the band, “If we can’t hear the old screen door, we rewrite.”
Close
Some songs aren’t meant for the charts. They’re meant to remind us why we ever picked up a pen.