“Scatter My Bones” very simply, is a love song. Less simply, it’s about funeral plans.
People often want to know, which came first, the band or the relationship, and I think many of them are surprised when we say it was the band. We had already written over 40 songs together, gone on multiple tours together, established a publishing company in both of our names (Penny Jar Publishing) and had dreams of sharing a house together that would function as a joint studio by the time we fell in love. Although, the official date of when we fell in love is hotly contested in this house, the day we realized we were in love was on Halloween in Dillsburg, PA. We were living in Nashville at the time and we were on tour and welp, when you know you know. We then went back to Nashville and didn’t talk about it for a few months but slowly our lives just became intertwined and we puzzled at the exact date and place we fell in love. Was it on one of those tours? Was it in Asheville? Was it on Martha’s Vineyard where we met?
The moment we realized we needed to get married, though, was just outside Cincinnati. We were on the freeway and traffic had come to a halt and so we slowed down when we saw the red brake lights. But in the rearview mirror we saw that someone wasn’t slowing down and we watched in horror as he crashed into the long line of cars behind us on the freeway and were given a lesson in kinetic energy as the car he hit bumped into the car ahead of it, and into the car ahead of it. We were fine, and luckily so was everybody else, but we realized that disaster comes for us all and it would be nice to visit each other in the hospital. And so, on a friend’s porch in Black Mountain, NC we were married on Leap Year Day.
We had already moved into the camper by the time we got married, and our tours had begun to follow the migration patterns of birds- North in the Summer, South in the Winter. We’d spend June in Michigan and July in South Dakota, travel to the White Sands of New Mexico and see the red clay of Alabama and Tennessee. We ventured West to California and visited my (Scott) childhood home and drove out to the beach, and being envious of the home owners with large glass windows and million dollars views and then realizing that we could just park in front of it and take that view for ourselves. We embodied the words of Woody Guthrie, “This land is your land, this land is my land…” I remember the first time we went North to New England and how amazed we were by the White Mountains and the trees, the fiddlehead ferns and wild ramps in the Spring, not being able to fathom that we would someday live there. And all of these places began to feel like home, even though no place was home, except where we were. Because what we realized was that home was always to be found in each other.
Someone recently pointed out that this song is a love song for each other, but more-so, it’s a love song for this country and for our travels in it. Once you find home in yourself, in who you love and what you love, you can move about the world with ease, knowing that your home cannot be taken from you.
But knowing that disaster will come for us all, Mallory gave me the plan, that if she is to die before me, she wants one last roadtrip where her ashes are scattered everywhere that we once felt at home, even just for a night. And we determined that will take a very long time to do, since we have been home in so many places together, that it would be best if neither of us die and we can just continue on as we do, peacefully enjoying each other’s company in this beautiful, all-too short lived Earth.
Scatter My Bones
Written by Mallory Graham & Scott Tyler
I
Scatter my bones in Green Appalachia
Where you loved me before I knew.
If it takes all you must mix my bones with the dust
Of the Southwestern sands where I loved you too
Take me back to the Black Hills of South Dakota
To the Great Lakes and let me float
But don’t let me sink in the salt of the ocean–
Don’t keep me, but don’t let me go.
CH1
Scatter my bones like I scattered my heart
Make me a bed of my own
But when you get to the wide mouth of the blue–
Turn around, take me back home.
II
Scatter my smoke to the crest of our mountain
Where I’ll make my nest with the clouds
And when you look up, can’t believe your luck–
I am the rain that’s coming back down
I’ve written hymns and I’ve written love songs
A few to get stuck in your head
One last song is never the last
So long as you don’t forget
CH2
So sing me a song about Green Appalachia
Where you loved me when I didn’t know
But don’t let me sink in the salts of the ocean–
Don’t keep me, but don’t let me go
Bridge:
Scatter my bones.
CH3
Scatter my bones like you scattered my heart,
Make me a bed of my own
When you get to the wide mouth of the blue
When you get to the wide mouth of the blue
When you get to the wide mouth of the blue
Turn around– take me back home.
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