Big Harp has always run parallel to real life for Stefanie Drootin and Chris Senseney. Across two decades together on the road and at home raising a family, their music has covered terrain not unlike their relationship: restless, grounded, complicated, durable. So while Runs To Blue (Saddle Creek) arrives 11 years after 2015’s Waveless, it feels less like a comeback than a continuation.
Recorded live with just vocals, bass and acoustic guitar, the album distills Big Harp to its emotional essence. In part shaped by the sudden loss of his mother, Senseney’s songs aim for clarity over cleverness. Drootin’s accompaniment gives them movement, counterpoint and warmth. If anything, Runs To Blue has the lived-in sound of a duo that’s got nothing left to prove and everything to live for.
Senseney offers his take on a collection of songs about love that lasts, grief that lingers, kids who grow up too fast and the strange, persistent pull of the life they might’ve lived.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Kill It, Kill It, Kill It”
“A song about the struggle to put a feeling into words—and the way something you feel so clearly starts to fall apart and lose its meaning when you say it out loud. Or you could say it’s about overwhelming grief and the inability to articulate it. I wrote the first two verses the day before my mom died, and the third verse the day after. It was strange. It felt like I’d been writing about something I had no idea was about to happen. It makes sense to me as an opener, an acknowledgement of the limits of words on an album that’s attempting to communicate as clearly as possible.”
2) “Hello Honey”
“This is the first straight-ahead love song on the album, although all the songs here are about love in one way or another. Love hits you sometimes from funny angles, especially when you’ve been with somebody for a long time. Watching them get ready in the morning, feeling them next to you when you’re having a rough night—it’s a gift. The last verse hopefully makes the point that our everyday normality and our quieter emotions are just as rare and miraculous. That’s really the guiding principle of the whole record.”
3) “Runs To Blue”
“A parent/child relationship song, although I think it could apply to other relationships, as well. It can be hard to watch the painful process of growth and to watch people you love wrestle with the certainty of sorrow and grief and disappointment. All you can do sometimes is love each other the best you can, even when your best doesn’t feel like much.”
4) “I Got An Itch”
“Like most of the songs here, this is pretty much about what it seems like it’s about. One of our goals was to be as plainspoken as possible on this record, with any lyrical tricks or wordplay in service to communication, not in the way of it. Coming back to playing music after taking somewhere around a decade off—and feeling like submerged versions of ourselves trying to swim our way back to the surface—this song was just kind of there. While it has a lot of details that are specific to us, I think the sentiment works for anybody who’s ever felt constricted by responsibility or nostalgic for a remembered freedom, real or imagined. We tried to give it a nice rambling feeling musically, with the gentle melodic bass solos as a bookend.”
5) “Colored Lights”
“In a specific sense, ‘Colored Lights’ is a sketch of our actual relationship, with verses that are little snapshots: falling asleep watching TV on the couch, a first meeting, sharing a hotel room with an infant. In a more general sense, it’s about the true mystery of another person and the moments of connection when their inner workings are partially unveiled. We can’t know each other completely, and there’s magic in the way we build imperfect bridges across that gap.”
6) “I’ll Write You Love Songs Until I Die”
“One of my favorite songs on the record—it’s the oldest, too … kicking around in one form or another for probably 12 years or so. It’s about the unpredictability of the world and our lack of control in it, and the way we choose to hold what we can still against a constantly shifting backdrop. No instrumental section here, but the bridge has a bit more movement in the chords, and Stef’s bass line there is one of my favorites on the album.”
7) “Take It Easy On Me”
“Another song about parenting, I guess—and about how hard it can be to navigate a relationship when one person in it is changing so much faster than the other. The nature of what you represent to each other is always in flux, and the one thing that stays constant—hopefully—is how much you love each other through the mess of it all.”
8) “Runnin’ For It”
“I barely understand this song myself, and it’s hard to put into words exactly what it means to me. There are some references to time and mortality in there, and that’s part of the meaning. But I think it’s also about the way our barely understood drives trip up our ambitions. It’s also about how the value in chasing something outstrips the value of the thing itself. Everything ends, death catches us every time—but we make a run for it anyway.”
9) “I Ain’t Gonna Cry”
“This is a goodbye song for my mom, with hopefully enough specificity to work for me without coming across too maudlin or sappy. The refrain is more a hope than anything. Tears always come back around when you least expect them, but they taste a little less bitter as time goes on. We played this one straight, simple and sweet.”
10) “I Get Lonesome Singin’ These Songs”
“Thematically, this one refers back to ‘I Got An Itch.’ Another one about coming back to playing music, and trying to collect some old pieces of yourself and see if you can fit them back in. A relaxed song about the urge to make art not as a grand statement or for a mysterious purpose, but as a simple, direct means of communication, whether with a musical partner, the audience or oneself.”
