You Don’t Run Across My Mind
“I open every set with it, just about,” said Irene Kelley of “You Don’t Run Across My Mind,” her song released in 2014 (Pennsylvania Coal) and cowritten by the late Peter Cooper. “It sets everything up well for me, ‘Here’s what I write, here’s how I sing.’ I do a lot of reminiscing, and this song is a good representation of that.”
With pure country vocals evoking Rory Feek and Dolly Parton, Kelley delivers a song with familiar tenderness. Her songs conjure that familiarity, too, and this song in particular feels like it could be speaking to any one of us.
Kelley’s songwriting influences include Jean Ritchie, Gregg Allman, Pete Goble, Rodney Crowell, Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn–to name a few. Her extensive songwriting catalog includes cuts by Carl Jackson (“You Are The Rock (And I’m A Rolling Stone)”), Alan Jackson (“A Little Bluer Than That”), Trisha Yearwood (“O Mexico,” “Second Chance”), Ricky Skaggs & Sharon White (“Love Can’t Ever Get Better Than This”), Claire Lynch (“Need Someone,” “Highway,” “Keep My Love There While I’m Gone,” “Jealousy”), Lorretta Lynn (“Hold Her”), Bradley Walker (“His Memory Walks On Water”), Valerie Smith, and many more.
From Idea to Development
Reflecting on “You Don’t Run Across My Mind” these days means thinking also about Cooper, who passed away recently, and unexpectedly. “I’m so proud that Peter’s a cowriter on this,” said Kelley of her departed friend. “He had so much reverence for country music and tradition. He honored it and was always very sincere. He was a treasure to write with, too.”
Kelley and Cooper had shared several stages and written a couple of songs together before this one. So, when Kelley had the idea for the song, she knew Cooper would be the right partner. “For me, cowriting is casting,” she said. “I’ll have an idea and think, ‘Oh, this would be perfect for so-and-so. That’s what I thought with Peter and this concept.”
With this song, Kelley was thinking about a person who doesn’t just pass through your mind, but fills it up and stays a while. “One of my favorite poets is Robert Frost, who takes the metaphor for emotion and expresses it through nature. I love that, and I try to do that,” she said. “This person is with you all the time in your memory, and when you call upon the memory, it creates a very strong emotion … a hurricane as opposed to a summer breeze.”
From the first line (Maybe I’m a passing thought, when the wood smoke’s in the air), that nature metaphor beautifully delivers the point of the song. “I love Gatlinburg,” said Kelley, “and I was saying to Peter, ‘When I smell a fire burning, it takes me back to the first time I visited.’ So, that’s in the first line. Of course, being from Pennsylvania, I had to get snow images in, and that’s in the second verse (Maybe I’m a coat you wore, through some winter long ago / Worn so close but left behind, when the spring replaced the snow). I’m pretty sure Peter wrote that whole second verse. It’s only two lines, but it works perfectly.”
Kelley explained that the third verse became about summing it up. “It’s not a bitterness. There’s no anger in it. It’s like, ‘I just hope that if/when you do think of me, you know I love you and that I always have and always will.’ I think someone described that as having a ‘generosity of spirit,’ and I like that. So, the song ends in a generosity of spirit. Peter and I talked about that, too, as we wrote it. He had a large amount of emotional intelligence, so we could have those kinds of conversations.”
And what a refreshing way to arrive at the hook! Rather than “you don’t run across my mind,” as in “I never think about you” as might be expected, the song shows that, for the singer, the subject brings not a fleeting feeling, but again, a permanent, heartfelt emotion: you don’t run across my mind / you’re in there all the time / you don’t travel through my heart / you are not a moving part.
(Check out Kelley’s and Cooper’s first cowrite, “Feels Like Home,” for another great take on a hook.)
Taking It to the Next Level
When they started writing, “You Don’t Run,” the two landed on a pretty “straight-ahead” structure and a melody that was “not too interesting,” initially. “It was all major chords—but I knew we had nailed the lyric,” said Kelley. “I played with that melody and added the 6 minor in the chorus to replace the 5 a little later. That lift made all the difference, in the melody anyway. I played it for Peter, and he liked the change.”
While they were writing the song, Kelley didn’t have specific plans for a record. The desire was there, however, and when she later recorded Pennsylvania Coal, “You Don’t Run” became the opening track. Kelley recalled Cooper’s excitement about how the track came out. “This memory is vivid and special. Peter and I were playing the Bluebird (in Nashville), and I had already cut the song. I had not put a keeper vocal on it yet, but I had a copy of the track with a guide vocal. We were in the parking lot before sound check, and I said, ‘Peter, I recorded our song, and I want you to hear it.’
“I played it for him, and he about lost his mind [in a good way]. He was like, ‘That is so good! You took it to a whole new level.’ It was great that we got to share the excitement of the song as it was getting better all the time. And then, when I got to add vocals in the studio, Mark Fain was producing, and Mark asked Darrin Vincent to sing the harmonies. Darrin just killed it, so that was the icing on the cake.”
Sports Analogies and Accolades
When it released in 2014, “You Don’t Run Across My Mind” reached #2 on the Bluegrass Today Top 20 Charts. “I knew it made #2 on the chart,” recalled Kelley, “because Peter posted something great about it.”
Cooper’s post said: “Irene Kelley and I are the Derek Jeter of bluegrass. We’re #2, thanks to Irene’s splendid version of our song, ‘You Don’t Run Across My Mind.’ Last week we were the Brett Favre of bluegrass, at #4. We have hopes of Ozzie Smithing it, but don’t want to get greedy.”
“I love that so much,” reflected Kelley. “It’s so Peter … everything for him was a baseball analogy, with warm and wonderful humor.”
Kyle Cantrell, who still plays the song on Bluegrass Junction (Sirius XM Channel 62) told Kelley recently that it might just be his favorite song of hers. Explaining to Bluegrass Unlimited, he elaborated, “Irene Kelley’s ‘You Don’t Run Across My Mind’ is a song which has stood the test of time. Well-crafted in every respect, starting with the superb writing of Irene and Peter Cooper, and extending through the excellent recording and Irene’s superb vocal, makes it a classic in my mind. It’s one of those recordings with that indescribable ‘feel’ that every artist strives for but only rarely achieves.”
Learn more about Kelley and her music at IreneKelley.com.
