Who: Good Graces

From: Atlanta, GA

Song: “His Name Was The Color That I Loved”

Latest Record: Prose and Consciousness, due out October 11

What About It: “The song is sort of a composite of several individuals. It was created for an assignment of sorts; I was “gifted” the title “His Name Was the Color That I Loved,” a few years ago as part of a Secret Santa challenge for a Facebook group I’m a member of. I wrote the song over the following month or so; the first verse and chorus came pretty quickly but then I got really stuck. So, I crowd sourced the rest of it.

I knew I wanted it to be about a person who was very honest, simple, and good, and who had a profound affect on the narrator. I posted something in one of the Facebook songwriting groups asking for personal stories about such a person. I got a few really great, detailed stories and started piecing it together. When it came time to write a third verse, I realized, this person was starting to sound a lot like my Dad. So I made it about him.

The third verse is the one I’m closest to – when I say “the middle of April,” I’m referring specifically to April 18, 1980-something. My dad was a peach farmer, and we had a frost the night before that destroyed his crop. I remember the date because it was my brother’s birthday. My dad’s life was his peaches, and when I ask “If there’s no crop left to tend to, can he find pride in anything?” I’m not only referring to that spring, but to his life, in general. Once he got older and stepped back from farming, his cognitive health declined pretty rapidly. I was very much aware of that when I was working on this song (and really, the entire album), so I think I’ve been trying to sort of preserve it for him, by referencing aspects of him in songs.” – Kim Ware