Exclusive Preview: SongWriter Season 4 Continues with Drew Holcomb, Wright Thompson

SongWriter is a podcast that turns stories into songs, featuring David Gilmour, Joyce Carol Oates, Steve Earle, Roxane Gay, Amanda Shires, Susan Orlean and Katie Melua. You can hear an exclusive preview of next week’s episode featuring Wright Thompson and Drew Holcomb, only at Paste.

Americana songwriter Drew Holcomb was on the road, and needed a little light reading. He picked up a copy of Garden & Gun magazine, after noticing that the theme of the issue was “highways and roads.” Inside was a story by journalist and author Wright Thompson about the death of his uncle, and it hit Holcomb hard.

“I found myself in an airport, reading this article and sobbing like a baby,” Holcomb says, smiling ruefully.

In the story, Thompson describes a drive to visit his uncle one last time at the family farm in Greenwood, Mississippi. He sits by his uncle’s bed holding his hand and weeping, and then heads home. By the time he gets back, his uncle has passed.

Holcomb comes from a large family—he is one of 38 grandkids—and says that he was raised by his aunts and uncles. His great uncle, a World War II veteran, was particularly central to his childhood. Holcomb fondly remembers shooting gourds and tomatoes with a .22 at his uncle’s remote mountain home.

“When I was reading this thing, I remembered very clearly the first time I drove that road after he passed away, and thinking, this road is never going to be the same,” Holcomb says.