It was Molly Maher who referred to our house on Burns Ave as the Big Pink, after The Band album. The initial paint color when we bought the house was definitely Barbie Butt Pink. What a great old house in a great location. We had this carriage house too, which was essentially a two-story garage with a third story up top with wood paneling and this real “cabin vibe” that of course all my musician friends immediately recognized as a prime recording space. In theory.
In the dozen years we lived there, lots of aspirational construction and repair went into that space, and there was definitely some music playing and recording done, including at least one House of Mercy Band session and some demos for Pocahontas County. In the end though, it was unheated, which made for a limited window in the Minnesota year when we could reasonably hang out there, and definitely not sound-proof, which made for a limited window in the day when you could reasonably record anything without background car and park noise.
There was a time after my kids came on the scene, probably around 2010 but I can’t exactly remember, when I would occasionally escape to that upstairs carriage house space and plug in my electric guitar and noodle around. The sliding glass door was western-facing and in the afternoon you got this sunny sunray dusty vibe with all the wood walls and the park vistas out the door. This song came out of that time, and when I was recording it this last winter here in my basement office in Kansas, playing that little chord progression with the B minor took me back to those sunny Minnesota afternoons in the spring and fall when the park was green and I had just a little time to myself.