Songwriting¶

Lyrics

SOME THINGS STAY SMALL

I counted heads in the morning light
Steam rising thick in the January cold
The runt was pinned to the cedar slats
Too thin to stand, too weak to hold
Mama whispered, "Let him be"
But Daddy just stared at the ground
I learned right then, in the quiet air
A breaking heart doesn’t make a sound

     It don't pay to love what you can't save
     But you do it anyway
     You want to see 'em run the fields
     But the red clay wants 'em to stay
     And it’s a long, dark walk to the edge of the woods
     To give 'em the peace they crave
     Yeah, he wouldn't grow
     God, I know
     Some things stay small
     Then they go

Daddy weighed him with heavy eyes
Same way he’d done a hundred times
Said, "He ain’t gonna make the winter, son"
Like reading a sentence for a crime
The .22 rifle by the kitchen screen
Morning quiet, sharp and clean
There’s a kind of mercy that looks like a sin
When you’re the one standing in between

     Repeat Chorus

He was shivering where the others slept warm
Reaching for a teat in the middle of a storm
If mercy’s got a human face
It ain't in the prayer, it's in the hard embrace

I still see him when the night runs thin
When the radiator hums and the walls close in
I don’t dream of the blood or the broken things
Just a little life waiting on the peace it brings
I don’t curse my daddy’s hands
I don't hold a grudge for the debt he paid
It takes a whole lot of love to kill something
So it doesn't have to be afraid

It don't pay to love what you can't save
But you do it anyway
I still see him run the fields
In a dream from a different day
But he wouldn't grow
Now I know
Some things stay small
And that’s okay
Yeah, they go
Yeah, they go

Writer: J. Ryan Johnson (BMI)
Copyright: © 2026 J. Ryan Johnson. All rights reserved.
Phone: +1 (407) 902-5419
Email: hello [at] tenthirtyam [dot] org

Lyrics

I'M JUST A RIVER

I’ve been carving through the valley
Long before they built this town
I’ve watched these waters rise
And families settle down
I’ve carried off the mountains
Every stone of joy and pain
I catch the ones who fall to me
And hold them year to year

The bridge has swallowed prayers
From quiet hums to raw-boned cries
I’ve seen the tired at midnight
Walking beneath a heavy sky
The moon hid behind the clouds
Too faint to see you leave
You fractured something in my depths
Searching only for relief

     I’m just a river, I don’t choose
     What the tired and hurting do
     But I’d trade every drop of me
     If love could’ve pulled you through
     The hard days spoke like the Gospel
     And you believed every word they said
     I’d have carried you a thousand miles
     But I couldn’t quiet your head

Now your name moves upstream
In your mother’s cry
In the silence your father swallows
When the house has lost its light
Your family passes by the rail
Holding breath inside their chests
Learning how to miss you
Without rehearsing how you left

     Repeat Chorus

Standing on the bridge
Believing rest is letting go
A current only moves one way
But a heart can still turn home

Writer: J. Ryan Johnson (BMI)
Copyright: © 2026 J. Ryan Johnson. All rights reserved.
Phone: +1 (407) 902-5419
Email: hello [at] tenthirtyam [dot] org

Lyrics

SHADOW OF THE CLOUD

I mixed the tank while the house was still
Pouring a blessing from a five-gallon kill
White jugs stacked like a monument of salt
We did what we did, and it wasn’t our fault
The rows needed saving and the bank needed grain
So we fired up the trucks and a yellow plane
We learned young what the dirt wouldn’t give
And how a man goes broke just to watch the harvest live

     And you can scrub your hands ‘til the skin turns red
     But you can’t wash away what’s already dead
     It hangs in the air, sweet and low
     A ghost in the lungs that waits and grows
     Yeah, the fields turn green, and the debts get paid
     But we’re dying in the shadow of the cloud we made

T-shirt soaked where the nozzle leaked through
And a stain on my skin that I couldn't undo
The spray-rig humming like a funeral bell
Buying us a season in a chemical hell
Daddy said, "Son, hold your breath when you turn"
But he never said nothing 'bout the way it would burn
He’d wash his face with the garden hose
And wipe the death right off of his clothes

     Repeat Chorus

I don’t blame the men who taught me the trade
They were terrified of the debts they’d made
You can’t fight the weevil with a prayer and a plow
And you can’t feed a family on the here and the now
So you trade away your breath for a yield per acre
And you pray for some mercy from the undertaker

I left that dirt, but I brought it along
In the marrow of the bone, in the silence of a song
Now the air in my chest feels heavy and still
Like the bottom of a hollow or a tank meant to kill
It takes a whole lot of work to keep a field in the black
When the price of the yield is the shirt on your back

I still see those jugs, bleached out in the sun
Like rows of headstones when the day is done
We weren't out to change the world, or even claim a right
Trying to keep a family tree from catching fire at night

But the soil’s gone sour
And the leaves are thin
And I can still smell the sweetness
Settling on my skin

Writer: J. Ryan Johnson (BMI)
Copyright: © 2026 J. Ryan Johnson. All rights reserved.
Phone: +1 (407) 902-5419
Email: hello [at] tenthirtyam [dot] org