Track 6 of the album The Lighthouse Years · 2017
The Drummer Kept Our Seats Warm
“The line about the drum kit still in time is true; an old friend rang me with the news. It is a song about loyalty, the quiet kind.”
neoclassical · neoclassical · chamber ballad · 3:40
Lyrics
The phone call came on Sunday, an old friend on the line Said the garage is still standing and the drum kit's still in time We haven't spoken properly in half a lifetime's rain But a voice can be a doorway to a room you thought was gone And I said yes before he finished Before I'd even thought it through The drummer kept our seats warm All these years, he held the beat Through the quiet and the mortgage and the fading of the street The drummer kept our seats warm And I'm walking up the drive With a guitar and a heartbeat and a song that's still alive The paint is peeling slowly where we wrote our names in chalk There's a poster from a gig we played, a little bent and torn He grins at me, his hair gone white, his hands still strong and sure And we don't need to explain a thing, we just tune up and begin And I said yes before he finished Before I'd even thought it through The drummer kept our seats warm All these years, he held the beat Through the quiet and the mortgage and the fading of the street The drummer kept our seats warm And I'm walking up the drive With a guitar and a heartbeat and a song that's still alive Time takes a lot, it's true But it leaves the best of us A chord, a laugh, a friend Who never made a fuss And waited The drummer kept our seats warm All these years, he held the beat Through the quiet and the mortgage and the fading of the street The drummer kept our seats warm And I'm walking up the drive With a guitar and a heartbeat and a song that's still alive Count us in, old friend Count us in