Houses On The Hill

one of the saddest songs i've ever heard - a woman's husband was killed in ww2 and she ended up marrying someone else and having kids (who found the box of letters) but she always loved her ww2 hero husband

Ryan (while with WT) said in an interview at World Café that he had the idea for this song after searching his ex-girlfriends' attic and finding some letters hidden away in a desk that belonged to her Mother. Her lover, died in WW2 and she never got over it, as many of you have already said.

Wow, it seems so obvious now. I Can't believe I didn't pick that up. Thanks

well done jacbowl. A terribly moving song. perfectly constructed with a saddest fiddle you've ever heard.

this IS one of the best songs ever written, sung and played. at least in my book.

You are absolutely right about it being about a World War II veteran. I really like the line:

"he kept her picture in his pocket that was closest to his heart and when he hit shore must have been a target for the gunman"

Must have been a target for the gunman, gets me everytime.

Just heard this song for the first time last night...blew me away. So I'm assuming the letters he found we written to the woman's house for the man who was away at war and she didn't know how to respond because he was possibly dead, so she just packed them away.

My favorite part is the "there were stars in the sky, there were bunkers on the hill and caskets to fill where he would lie, shrouded in the red, white and blue with the stripes"...wow.

It's really powerful how you don't know that the man broke her heart by dying until the end.

hmm. before reading this, i thought they were letters about two former lovers, one that died in a snow storm, the other in a war. maybe i'm being too literal and the reference to "blankets of snow" refers to the white light that draws you while dying.

People use the word "sad" a lot when referring to this song but I see it as one of the most realistic songs he's ever written.

He used his imagination and put himself in the shoes of this woman who he said had all these letters from her beloved husband, a soldier of WWII, and just the agony and pain she went through when she lost him fighting for his country. What she went through and what she felt... How it happened...

"...there were bottles of pills...to keep her from the oncoming storm." - how more real can you possibly get. Such a powerful line. "Oncoming storm" is yet another classic description of exactly what this woman was headed towards time and time and time again. Over and over and over repeatedly.

This is a song when he got done writing it, I can see him saying, "yessssssss."

Out of the countless number of songs Ryan has written or been a part of, this is in my Top 3. It's short, sweet, and above all - powerful.

Here's a cover I did of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUOg9ttzNik

People use the word "sad" a lot when referring to this song but I see it as one of the most realistic songs he's ever written.

He used his imagination and put himself in the shoes of this woman who he said had all these letters from her beloved husband, a soldier of WWII, and just the agony and pain she went through when she lost him fighting for his country. What she went through and what she felt... How it happened...

"...there were bottles of pills...to keep her from the oncoming storm." - how more real can you possibly get. Such a powerful line. "Oncoming storm" is yet another classic description of exactly what this woman was headed towards time and time and time again. Over and over and over repeatedly.

Out of the countless number of songs Ryan has written or been a part of, this is in my Top 3. It's short, sweet, and above all - powerful. This is a song when he got done writing it, I can see him saying, "yessssssss."

My cover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUOg9ttzNik