Story Behind the Song: London

This one is unique in that it is a story behind a song that is not released yet. London is a song that is cut by Brandon Heath on his new record "What If We" that will release this next Tuesday, August 19th. You can preview the song here.
Update: You can now buy London here.

In June of 2005, my sister Laurianne and I drove up to Kentucky for orientation for a trip we were taking to Europe. We were asked by a guy named Martin Allen to help facilitate teaching on a trip called Songwriter's Journey. The purpose of the trip was to study some of the influential writer's in Christianity and to go to the places where they lived and wrote. The hope was to be inspired in the places to write songs based on their teaching. We flew into Rome and went south and studied Benedict, a man who lived in the fourth century and wrote a book called "The Rule". From there, we took a train to Wittenburg, Germany where Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the Castle Church and sparked the Protestant Reformation. There were 6 of us on the trip and our last destination was Oxford, England to study C.S. Lewis. I was dating Sarah and had found time to call her and talk a few times while I was on the trip. We went through London to get to Oxford and when the train pulled into Waterloo Station in London, I was thinking about Sarah and I started singing these lines:

My train pulled into Waterloo
I found myself wishing you
Were here with me in London

We all sat in the middle of Waterloo Station and ate McDonalds and I got out the Minidisc player that I had with me and just sang the idea and the melody into the mic to get the idea down. We toured London and saw all the double-decker buses, Big Ben, and Parliament but I was missing Sarah so much that I couldn't enjoy it all as much as I wanted to. We went on to Oxford and finished the trip well. Laurianne and I were supposed to stay in London for several days after the trip but I was ready to go home. She graciously allowed me to change our tickets to leave the next day.

When I got home, I had a day down on my calendar to write with Brandon. I don't know that we had good direction for what we were going to write that day but he was in the season of writing for his record so we were trying to write for that. I think we were stumped for ideas so I sang the lines for him that I had written in Waterloo Station in London. I told him about how I felt about missing Sarah while I was there. Brandon is so creative that the song didn't take long to write. It was almost one of those that just fell out of us. Here's the lyric we came up with:

London
written by Brandon Heath and Chad Cates

My train pulled in to Waterloo
I found myself wishing you
Were here with me in London
Standing on the river Thames
Taking photographs Parliament
And old Big Ben was ringing
It’s everything that I imagined it would be
I had no idea that it would feel this empty

Chorus:
Where are you tonight
While I stand here and cry
Watching double-decker buses pass me by
And to tell the truth
It’s all that I can do
To keep from jumping a plane that’s headed home
To you

I took a stroll down abbey road
Tried to peak inside the studio’s
And somewhere along the way I bought you flowers
And I bought a map of the underground
Cause You and I both know I get turned around
I’m so lost without you
It’s everything that I imagined it would be
I had no idea that it would feel this empty

Bridge:
6 long nights and seven days I’ll cross the pond back to the states
I can’t wait

We did a demo for the song and the head of Brandon's record label really loved it and wanted him to cut it. It turned out that the timing just wasn't right for it to go on his first record. I was really excited when he told me that he was cutting it for this new record and when I heard it, I loved it. I hope you love it too.

When we connected to write again for this record that's about to come out, we wrote several new songs together that he has cut. You can check those out as well. They are called "Love Never Fails" and "Trust You".