Blackberry Jam

It’s blackberry season in Tennessee! Here's a Taste of Andy’s Blackberry Jam for you!
This sweet video was created by Andy’s good friend and former band mate, the late Tabby Crabb, just for fun. (Thanks Tab!)

©Lauren LeCroy May, Andy May (Swift River Music/BMI)
This song is on Andy's Blackberry Jam album. Download from CD Baby

Behind the Song

Lauren (words): I wrote this lyric the second summer we lived in Tennessee, after we had been once through all the seasons. We had moved from Colorado at the end of the previous May with our then 2-year-old, and wild blackberries, which didn’t grow in the part of Colorado where we had lived, were a revelation to us. (So were chiggers, but that’s another story entirely!) Every bit of this song is true: Blackberry picking with our kid and our old black dog became a part of our summers, and blackberry jam became a part of our winters.

Andy (music): When Lauren first showed me this lyric, she asked if I could work in a break using a bit of the old fiddle tune, Blackberry Blossom when I scored it. I worked with it a bit and realized that the structure of her lyric fit Blackberry Blossom perfectly – it just needed a “b part.” Lauren re-worked one of her verses into a b part/chorus and I based the entire melody on Blackberry Blossom – including working in the break that Lauren had asked for.
Several years later, my buddy, Tabby Crabb, made a music video of this song for us. (Above)
I never get tired of singing this song – it takes me back to those days.

Credits

• Produced by Andy May, Swift River Music
• Andy May: lead vocals, acoustic guitar
• Jim Heffernan: second guitar
• Kenny Malone: percussion
• Dennis Crouch: bass
• Rick Lee: piano
• Tim Crouch: fiddle
• Larry Marrs: harmony vocals
• Craig Fletcher: harmony vocals
• Engineered by Nathan Smith
• Recorded and mixed at Mainframe Recording Studio, Nashville, TN, July-November, 1999
• Mastered by Eric Wolf, Wolf Mastering, Nashville, TN
• Cover photo by Lauren LeCroy May

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