From the recording The View From Here
'Home' is a love song to my prairie roots. I have spent many years travelling the prairies and I have a particularly deep love for Saskatchewan, where my family is from. The wind…I could watch the wind whisper her secrets to the prairie grasses for hours. The sky…the wind again, creating her limitless art above our heads. And of course…the people! Many of the best humans I know are from the prairies. This song mentions some of my favourite things about the prairies, including the sweetly scented caragana bushes surrounding most home quarters, and the clay bricks that can be found around the world that were dug and fired at the Claybank Brick Plant.
Lyrics
It’s late February, the green is pokin’ through, the barn swallow hears the call
Five thousand miles in a straight line north, collectively conscious of home
Little wings beating the wind above the prairie, guided by memories of home
You’re going home, you’re flying home to the nest in that old red barn, you had to go
when the autumn wind, turned bitter cold and the ice made a skin on the pond far below
You’re going home, you’re flying home
Instrumental
It’s a red hot summer, the flax is turning blue, the fish in the dugout are jumpin’
Three generations worked on this land, and now it’s a place to call yours
Pine trees and poplars, and ashes and caraganas, kept the wind from your door
And now it’s home, this is your home, our love and our time’s in the land
It’s in the worn old bricks of the Claybank fireplace, the water that runs in the well
You are home, you are home
Instrumental
They met one fall, the wheat was turning brown. It was love at first sight in her eyes
Fifty long miles on the rural route road, he traveled to ask for her hand
In the old red barn, the swallows were leaving, hand in hand they watched the sky
I’ll be you’re home, I’ll be your tomorrow, like the shelter of the old red barn for the barn
swallows. I’ll be you’re home, I’ll be your tomorrow, like the shelter of the old red barn for the barn swallows
I’ll be your home
I’ll be your home
I’ll be your home
Instrumental