Patch of Blue by Claire Lynch
A great song can be deeply personal yet decidedly universal in its ability to touch listeners. “Patch of Blue,” written by Claire Lynch and released on her award-winning Dear Sister album (2013, Compass Records), is a case in point. It wasn’t a hit single. It isn’t the fastest, grassiest number on the album. Instead, it’s that surprise gem that, when you listen to the project from start to finish, rewards you for your interest and follow-through.
Widely respected for her accomplishments in the bluegrass world and beyond, Lynch led the celebrated Front Porch String Band in the 1970s and, since 2005, the Claire Lynch Band. To date, she has earned nine International Bluegrass Music Association awards (three as Female Vocalist of the Year), three GRAMMY nominations, the prestigious United States Artists Walker Fellowship, and the love and admiration of fans the world over.
Her voice has earned the respect of renowned artists like Dolly Parton, who dubbed hers “one of the sweetest, purest and best lead voices in the music business today.” Lynch is revered as a songwriter, too, with songs recorded by The Seldom Scene, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea, Cherryholmes, The Whites, Irene Kelley, Pierce Pettis and others. Of her songwriting, Dave Higgs (WPLN, Nashville) wrote, “She’s a songwriter of extraordinary ability who can bring listeners to their feet with her buoyant rhythms or to their knees with her sometimes almost unbearably poignant and insightful lyrics.”
I first heard and felt the poignancy of “Patch of Blue” back in 2013. The instrumentation, melody and lyrics – in that order – drew me into the song and wouldn’t let me go. I found myself wanting to know more about what I was hearing and responding to. I think you will, too, so let’s dig in.
From Somewhere Between Choice and Desire
The song delivers heartfelt lyrics that, in vivid color, touch on the struggle between choice and desire. After mentions of “black and white,” “wrong and right,” the song goes on to offer a glimpse of relief – that bit of light, that “patch of blue.”
“People need to tell the truth, and not gloss over it,” said Lynch, unafraid to share the backstory of this vulnerable song. “The gist of this song is my tussle with ‘Do I need to wait for someone who fits all the Christian criteria or am I going to jump in and be happy?’ It’s my struggle between what I really love and want versus what the Church has told me I can or can’t have.”
After Lynch’s first marriage ended, she didn’t date for about six years. “I didn’t even want to think about dating,” she elaborated. “But then one day, I woke up and realized, ‘Gee, I’m lonely.’ It was the strangest feeling.”
When she met Ian, who would become her second husband, Lynch soon found herself deep in love. The feeling came naturally, but there was some initial tension that had to do with the couple’s differing backgrounds and beliefs. While she was a professing Christian, Ian was not. “I was raised in evangelical church,” explained Lynch. “Part of that theology is that you shouldn’t be ‘unequally yoked.’ Although I was ‘equally yoked’ in one respect the first time, there was little fulfilling in that relationship, for either party.”
Lynch found in Ian the qualities that she had been missing in a relationship and that even struck her as “Christ-like,” in terms of unconditional love, safety, humility and kindness. “He felt like Jesus ought to feel to a person,” said Lynch, adding that she’d never been treated that way. “In the song, I was trying to say that I feel God’s love through Ian. I don’t mean to elevate him to a place of deity, but it felt like, ‘You’re God’s gift to me.’”
So, “Patch of Blue” is Lynch’s journey towards embracing this new love in her life. “Verse three says, Time and distance out in space / God is reaching for the human race / But all I need is to embrace your love,” she said. “That was me saying, ‘I think you’re God’s answer for me, and if not, too bad, cause I’m jumping in.’”
Grey Turns Blue – An Evolving Hook/Title
Lynch had been thinking about this song idea well before sitting down to write it. “I remember strumming the guitar with my fingers, just like it is on the recording after the bass intro lick,” she said. “From there, the words black is black and white is white kind of fell out.”
Once settled into the writing, Lynch at first focused on the hook patch of grey rather than patch of blue. “I had the first verse and then for some reason, I was trying to work grey into the lyrics (my husband’s last name is Gray). When I shared that with the band, they laughed me down, saying it was too corny,” she smiled. “I was thinking, ‘How can I say this?’ I’m talking about black, white, grey –then it occurred to me that blue makes perfect sense! It’s the sky shining through the clouds. Let’s add some color here!” Incidentally, she did work in the grey later in the chorus (Lookin’ up now, there is only you / Smilin’ down into my world of grey).
More so than with the lyrics, the melody flowed out quickly, like a river of emotion. “Apparently, I have an aptitude for melody,” said the songwriter. “My mom said when I was a little girl and she’d be driving us somewhere, I’d be sitting in the back seat just humming to myself, anything that was in my mind.”
While the song’s structure is simple – just three verses and a chorus – the lyrics are anything but, conveying the intense sentiment surrounding the war one can feel between choice, desire and beliefs. The instrumentation runs deep as well, highlighting the beautiful and heartfelt playing of band members Matt Wingate, Bryan McDowell, and Mark Schatz.
“Patch of Blue,” in all its simplicities and complexities, is but one thread in a deeply woven tapestry of an album. Dear Sister, during a period of almost two years, reached the #1 position seven times on the Roots Music Report’s Top 50 Bluegrass Album Chart, received an IBMA Album of the Year nomination in 2013, and in 2014, Lynch and “Dear Sister” cowriter Louisa Branscomb won 2014 IBMA Song of the Year. Learn more about Claire Lynch at clairelynch.com.
