Porch Songs :: Chris Pureka

My post is a day late with apologies. I was busy yesterday introducing my Ohio friends to the hootenannny. Tonight, however, my roommate and I are heading to a Chris Pureka concert. Chris Pureka is a independent singer-songwriter who was opening for Dar Williams on tour last fall, where I first saw her perform live. Most of her songs are all pretty mellow and melancholy - good for a rainy days or contemplative cooking alone in your apartment. However, this song, "Porch Songs" is relatively upbeat for Chris. For me, the song evokes memories of times very close to my heart such as impromptu sing-alongs in the apartment in Water St. in Decorah, sharing a room with Meghan during my sophomore year of college, family road trips when my brother and I were small, swimming in the Upper Iowa River with Krissy and running around barefoot afterward, sitting on Joanie's front porch with her in D.C. drinking tea like old men and countless summer nights in Michigan singing my campers to sleep from outside their cabin doors.

In the end, I think all music is about these moments, in some form or another.



"Porch Songs" Chris Pureka

We sang porch songs like we were rock stars
We drank cheap beer and tried to make it last
Then it was back in the car
The coast to the cornfields
Maybe we were just looking for something else to call ourselves

Rest stop coffee, yeah postcards back home
Back seat scenes of strange towns
Keep driving on, driving on
In the middle of the night, we took a wrong turn
Ended up on a mountain in the pine trees and the moonlit earth

Oh the scattered light, a photograph in mind
Of a summer day, squinting at the sun
It's a warm stone, that I carry along
You know I, you know that I
I've been saving quarters, for the toll roads
We can pack the car tonight, we can leave town tomorrow
Put me on a porch swing out in Portland
Put me on an F train, roll me back into Brooklyn
Well we closed the bars, like we were cowboys
And then we wrote our names in the dirt by the side of the road
And October came and the winter drew near
With the cold fingers digging in under the ribs
But we were campfire girls and we were kicking up the leaves
And we returned to our jobs with our clothes smelling of wood-smoke

Oh the scattered light, a photograph in mind
Of a summer day, squinting at the sun
It's a warm stone, that I carry along
You know I, you know that I
I've been saving quarters, for the toll roads
We can pack the car tonight, we can leave town tomorrow
Put me on a porch swing out in Portland
Put me on an F train, roll me back into Brooklyn

We sang porch songs like we were rock stars
We drank cheap beer and tried to make it last