The Year of Twelve Songs, Pt 11

When We Get Old

This Month’s Song: When We Get Old

This song is a true-to-life outline of the thirty years my wife and I have lived together as a couple. Like any long relationship, we’ve had many ups and downs, ins and outs, and WTF’s. I wrote it a couple years ago and did a video at the time. This is the same video, with a couple edits, but the musical performance is new.

A closeup of the Taylor American Dream guitar; the Shure MV51 Microphone; the 'primitive' GarageBand file.

Performance & Production

This is not how I planned this month’s song, but my wife and I are in the process of prepping to move 2500 miles across the country. So I went all basic, almost primitive. Just me and the guitar, live and one take, no overdubs but some enhancement in the mix and master process, and that’s it.

What I mean by ‘primitive’ is that most of my equipment is packed because of the impending move, so this was recorded straight to iPhone using a Shure MV51 USB/lightning microphone. And mixed and mastered using Apple AirPods.

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Lyrics

Do you remember those early days

The old folks said we’d never last

One-room apartment, two broke down cars

And all the loving a man could ask

The years rush by, the lows and highs

The tears we cry and the songs we sung

But we’re still laughing and love’s still fun

When we get old, we’ll still be young

The middle years we worked so hard

The graveyard shifts, the overtime

Nose to the grindstone, no paid vacation

But I was yours and you were mine

The years rush by, the lows and highs

The tears we cry and the songs we sung

But we’re still laughing and love’s still fun

When we get old, we’ll still be young

We bought that big house, that Cadillac

Then times got hard, we lost it all

Now we been downsized, but we don’t mind

Same wedding pictures up on the wall

And time ain’t nothing but an unpaid loan

Love ain’t measured by the rooms it fills

You can’t be happy with a bitter heart

And age ain’t nothing but a tale to tell

Now we’re the old folks, the kids have grown

Paid off the mortgage, walked off the job

Come by on Sunday, drinks on the front porch

Steaks on the grill, corn on the cob

The years rush by, the lows and highs

The tears we cry and the songs we sung

But we’re still laughing and love’s still fun

When we get old, we’ll still be young

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Gear & Software

Guitar: Taylor American Dream AD11e Grand Theater

Plug-ins: Waves CLA Vocals; Waves Abbey Road Studio 3

Educational Resources: Colin Cross, TheBandGuide.com; Joe Gilder, HomeStudioCorner.com

Hardware: MacBook Air 2020, with AOC 27-inch auxiliary monitor.

Apple AirPods 2

Shure MV51 Large Diaphragm Condenser Microphone

Thanks for listening!