Like the narrative-focused folk of a musical ancestor like Townes Van Zant, on his single Before I Knew, Colton Venner lets the story do the talking. It’s a boy-meets-girl kind of thing, with a County Fair, and lonely bedrooms, and some difficult memories.

It’s hard to know when, much less how, to let go, but now that it’s done there are some lessons left in the ashes:

And by the end, we have the realization: you ain’t never going to love me. The real question is why she was ever standing there, in the first place. The answer to that, is the answer to everything, as a Van Zant paraphrase: otherwise, we’d just be waiting around to die.

Colton Venner is a singer-songwriter from Texas. This song is featured on our Country - Americana playlist.