This song is a very dear one to me and is one of two on the album that could be described as. at least to some extent, autobiographical. I wrote it in early 2002, about a year before I moved home to Mississippi from Washington DC. At the time, I had just made a decision to re-focus my life and career around music. I grew up in Mississippi, a place where music seems to live in the air all around you. I really missed that, and I also wanted to be closer to my family (I had left for college and lived in various faraway locales for a long time).
All of these feelings poured out of me as I wrote the lyrics to this song in one afternoon (while pretending to work at a miserable “temp” job); t he music came a little later. Recorded over multiple sessions at Popaholic and Terminal Recording Studio.
The sweet, sweet surrender of a dark and cold December The smell of burning firewood in the air My friends and my relations make a bright constellation Of the memories I once created there
When I'd go walking down the Magnolia Road To find the places that I used to go And when the time comes 'round to take me one thousand miles away There I go, but here my heart will stay
There's not much explanation for this old infatuation I know there isn’t much that I can do 'Cause time marches onward, with dreams left undiscovered And still this road leads me back to you
And I am walking down the Magnolia Road To learn the things that I used to know And though I know I’m chasing shadows through the alleys of my past The road will take me to the things that last
Tell me that old story of the power and the glory Tell me how to chase my fears away Give me one good reason to make it through one more season Until the time when I come back to stay
And we’ll go walking down the Magnolia Road Hold me tight until I have to go Until the time comes 'round to take me one thousand miles away There I go, but here my heart will stay
