Music | Ruth Purves Smith

Track 1: Shine Your Light
This album starts and finishes with a mantra. A mantra given to me in a dark and scary time; a mantra like light itself. This is all we can try to keep doing in that darkness – Shine your light.

Track 2: Ride Around
Ride Around actually happened in a tiny hamlet here in rural Alberta. The eldest child would be 16 years old now. This song resonates with many people. The late Back Alley John HAD to record a harmonica track for this song. It was his final professional recording. He died in June 2006. We recorded his track May 10, 2006. Check the upcoming blog for the whole amazing story. Help the helpless when you can. As Jann Arden says, “Love is the only soldier left”.

Track 3: Here Comes That Train
I lived for many years in a wee place that the train ran right past. Many days were very cold and at times you could hear that train coming for miles through the crisp air. You gotta have a train song.

Track 4: Godzilla
Just when the sun starts shinin’ and you go riding around on that train… the monster shows up. This world seems to be so full of them, pick your monster, any monster!

Track 5: Just A Thought…
Ruth. Look it up in the dictionary. What blessing to bear this name. Thanks Mom.

Track 6: Out In The Storm part I
Once the line of redemption seems crossed what happens? We’re there in the twister. This song was inspired by Ralph Boyd Johnson, Corb Lund and Custom Woollen Mills’ duster.

Track 7: New Light
I wonder what it would be like to be blind. I don’t really want to know. Our lives are so involved with our perceptions. If we can see it we can believe it. Can we really see? What light is at the end of the tunnel? Fireworks, I hope!

Track 8: Where Does This Thing End
A very dear friend lost his way one day…

Track 9: Out In The Storm part II
In 1987 I worked for a fella named Charlie Stricker. We packed way into the wilds of British Columbia. We crossed the Injunika River on a barge with 30 head of horses. Late in the season I spent a few weeks alone in a box canyon with those horses and a grizzly. I had nothing to read or much to write on save paper lunch bags. It wasn’t long before I just kind of became part of where I was. There were no words. There was no need for language. The sky was so big and the stars they shone like diamonds in the sky so far away.

Track 10: I Know The Way
My Ma passed in August of 2007, same day as Elvis. I guess that must mean she’s still kickin’ around somewhere. Hi Mom! Hi Elvis!
It is said that a good sense of humor is essential to making it through the grey these days. Ya, we’re all laughin’ now. Ha, ha, ha… ya I know the way.

Track 11: Doin’ The Dance
We should all dance like nobody is watching.

Track 12: Pack It Up & Go
The twenty-first century seems to be starting with distractions. When there’s no TV or telephone (or should I say cell phone?), no motorized vehicles and no internet, there’s only the time and place you’re living in. A person could surely grow old there. Happily.

Track 13: Shine Your Light (reprise)
Thanks. Thank you. Gratitude. These words are not big enough for me to impart what must be expressed. The journey to now has been one of endurance. I am in such debt to all those who have travelled with me. (But don’t worry, you’ll get your cash! ) I love you all.