“Welcome to Regrets” is a song that I wrote in 2014 with the great songwriter Pat Terry and my daughter Katie Furr, who gave me the original idea.  One day she said, “Dad, I have an idea for a song—a tattoo parlor in Brooklyn where old hipsters can go to get their tattoos removed.”  Great idea!  So I set out to write it.  Originally, I went for funny, and wrote all the “droopy tattoo” ideas you can imagine.  When I pitched this to Pat when we were together for him to lead a workshop, he suggested it had some rich possibilities for a serious story song.  I liked that.  I prefer going for the non-obvious.  But I was stuck after setting it up to find an ending. 

Then I heard a real story that made the last verse.  We had a couple in the church from Scotland (wife from England). He taught religion at the university here, she was a chaplain. She was fearless in walking in to care for people and bear gentle witness for the love of God for them, once even preaching alone in a men’s prison to inmates in a third world country. She told of a tattoo artist in Chicago who offered free removals to trafficked women caught in prostitution—it was a way pimp’s marked them. I looked up a newspaper account of it and just told the story imaginatively.

I was stuck, though. A lot to explain. So I called on my friend Pat, who wrote a lot of Nashville country songs for Travis Tritt, Tanya Tucker and others after he washed his hands of contemporary Christian music. He came up with verse one. It was brilliant. The song was done, a collaboration of three of us (four, counting Gwen, telling the story!). I simply paid attention to disparate bits of life and conversations that assembled themselves in a way that made heart sense to me. I am always looking for those bits and pieces out there, scanning to find them, hoping random things actually connect somehow. I do better with artistic listening than rational problem solving the cosmos. Maybe the humility. Evocative is better for my gifts than condensation.

I love the song, too. I love this song. A song of redemption.  A child who turned out well.

 LISTEN https://garyallisonfurr.bandcamp.com/track/14-welcome-to-regrets

“Welcome to Regrets”

Gary Allison Furr, Pat Terry and Katie Furr

Gary Furr Music/BMI all rights reserved

There’s a storefront just off main street

I won it in a bet

I set up shop last August,

And I called the place “Regrets”

It’s a name that sounds depressing,

But you don’t know my story yet

Have a cup of coffee while I tell,

About the kind of service that I sell…

I used to be an artist, my canvas human skin

I tattooed tribal signs and

            angel wings on people then.

But I figured there’s good money

Erasing youth’s mistakes

Names and skulls and botched attempts

            at coiled up rattlesnakes.

CHORUS

Welcome to Regrets, where mistakes are burned away–             

            for a little pain and a lot of cash

you can leave the past to stay

I can take it off the outside

            but that’s all I can do.

Your soul, your heart, and memories

            Are up to you.

Some people knew just what they want

When they chose their art.

It sags and droops into their belts

But it still says who they are.

But some got drunk at Myrtle Beach

Didn’t see the harm

Now I take off the career killers

Slithering down their arms

CHORUS

Welcome to Regrets                         

Where mistakes are burned away               

For a little pain and a lot of cash

You can leave the past to stay

I can take it off the outside

            But that’s all I can do

Your soul, your heart, and memories

            Are up to you.

A young girl comes to see me,

Can’t look me in the eye.  Said

“My pimp said I belong to him

Until the day I die.

In the mirror there’s a bar code

On my neck, his mark on me.

But now I’ve got these children, 

And I’m trying to be free.

CHORUS

Welcome to Regrets,            

Where mistakes are burned away               

This one’s on the house, dear

You can bury the past to stay

I’ll take it off the outside

That’s my gift to you.

All the rest from this day on

Is up to you.

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