Verse 1 This Is Really The Way It Is People tell me all the time "AI is really writing all your songs" But the more I've thought about….. The more I know they are wrong Every song begins somewhere With a memory I've known A road, a face, a creek, the church, the cemetery Or a place I once called home Verse 2 I write the stories down myself The things I've lived and seen Then I use a few new tools To help me shape the dream I work the words and change them up Until they sound just right Then into Suno they will go To bring the song to life Chorus The stories are mine The memories too The roads and the faces The things we've been through I don't have a big Nashville team Or producers standing by It’s just an old storyteller And a little help from AI Verse 3 Professional musicians Have a whole crew on their side Songwriters and arrangers Helping bring their songs to life I've never had that luxury Never walked that road before But these new tools have opened up A brand-new kind of door Verse 4 Something funny happened too That I never would have guessed Folks started paying attention More than when I'd simply tell the rest Some stories I'd told many times Some I'd written years before In the pages of Angora Chronicles That folks had mostly ignored Chorus But the stories are mine The memories too The roads and the faces The things we've been through Music somehow carries things Words alone can't always do Now these old stories started finding A whole brand-new audience too Bridge Maybe songs aren't really songs Maybe that's not what they are Maybe they are a way of carrying memories Across the years and through the dark The history of Smithwick The people who lived there The church, the cemetery and the creeks and once filled up the air Charlie and Minnie Campbell, The old mill site down on the river, and every memory's worth it Verse 5 Now I'm beginning to believe The next step may not be a song Maybe it's me standing where it happened And simply bringing folks along A camera in my pickup Rolling down old fourteen thirty one From Jackson Bottom turnoff all the way through Smithwick Down to the old Boul-ting-house Place Showing where the stories come from and just talking about it all places time forgot Seeing it the way I saw it Back in nineteen sixty-six Fourteen years old and driving the roads That still live in my mind Even though the years have passed Those memories survived Final Chorus The stories are mine The memories too The roads and the faces The things we've been through And someday when my grandchildren Wonder where they came from Maybe they'll see their granddad standing there………Pointing across a pasture in the sun Saying, "This is where it happened This is where the story starts" And if AI helps preserve those memories Then that's technology with heart Outro (Spoken) So no... AI isn't writing these songs. It's helping me preserve a lifetime of memories. And that's a legacy worth leaving behind.
