Written in late 2024 and recorded shortly thereafter, this is a song that harkens back to my origins as a coffeehouse acoustic singer-songwriter. To begin: yes, there really was a “Kenna” who died in a car crash with her mother. But the Kenna who lives in this song is a composite character.
The opening preserves the emotional truth of that sudden, unexplained recollection of someone close who’s gone — but to honor her family, and for other narrative reasons, I knew it wouldn’t work to tell her actual story. In the VC song-sphere, it made more sense for the loss to be a romantic one.
What you hear is essentially what I first recorded. Because my live vocal sometimes sounded as though it were already using auto-tune, I experimented with it subtly in the studio. It’s the only track I’ve released featuring just voice and guitar — the starkness of the arrangement matching the tone of the song. I was amazed at how engineer Colin Coppola was able to “enlarge” that sound in the final mix.
VC: vocals and acoustic guitar
Kenna
Strange what can spur a memory
A smell, a sound, or the words of a song
Or the time of year when the nights are long
It was winter break-a Saturday afternoon
When I got the word that you’d died too soon
On a drive with your mother to the mall
And that was all for you, Kenna
Kenna my love so many tears I’ve cried
Remembering you as more than the girl who died
The fiery red hair and the devilish grin
But you left this world as we tried to begin, Kenna
I remember you, Kenna
You were 25 and I was a young 43
When we met sitting under that redwood tree
The last light of a fall day spreading thin
My friends all said she’s nothing but trouble
She’ll blow up your life into a pile of rubble
But the nights I spent with you set me free
It had to be you, Kenna
Kenna my love you don’t know how I’ve tried
To tell the world you were more than the girl who died
Feral green eyes and your always pale skin
But you left this world as we tried to begin, Kenna
I sat in the church all dressed in black
Praying to the Lord he could send you back
Stares from the family thinking what did she see?
How could their lost little girl have loved a man like me
But you did, Kenna; I know you did, Kenna
I remember you, Kenna
Strange what can spur a memory
A smell, a sound, or the words of a song
Or the time of year when the nights are long
It’s mid-December, a rainy afternoon
And I’m lost in the sadness of how you died too soon
On a drive with your mother to the mall
And that was all for you, Kenna
Kenna my love so many tears I’ve cried
Remembering you as more than the girl who died
The time we had it was razor thin
Because you left this world as we tried to begin, Kenna
I remember you, Kenna
