Pretty Back Then

from A Body is a Delicate House by Jeni Hankins

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    With touring an impossibility during lockdown, Jeni brimmed with songs. "A Body is A Delicate House" is her studio album from the lockdown period – first released as a hand-pressed CD in fall of 2021. After a successful limited pressing, she had the album remastered by Martin Stansbury of Cacophony Cottage Studios and factory pressed in 2022.

    In this release and in her other lockdown release "I Fell Into the Fire," she returns to Jewell Ridge for stories as well as finding inspiration in the life of her late music mentor, Norman Cross.

    The physical CD comes with a 46-page booklet complete with essays, liner notes, lyrics, and collages made by Jeni by hand.

    From the conclusion to Jeni's liner notes:

    "Every little thing I’ve done in my terrestrial life has pointed me toward this calling – to watch and note, to report back, to listen for broadcasts from the spirit and from those who have crossed to the other side. My delicate house has an antenna which is always switched on for particular messages. This has always been my way. It’s just how I was made in the same way that I always woosh into a chair without calculating the risk, in the same way that I have one squinty eye like Dad, like Grandaddy, the newspaper men, the reporters.

    These songs are my reading and translation of what I’ve heard in the recent worldwide news from the firmament and the spirit. Bless those who whisper these messages and the celestial currents that carry them.

    There’ll be loaves, there’ll be fishes
    – the answer in your hands.
    And you’ll tell it all to me
    when you reach the promise land.
    Amen, Dad. Amen."

    Includes unlimited streaming of A Body is a Delicate House via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 26 Jeni Hankins releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of String Unraveller Demo May 2021, The American Dream (Harlis and Freda), Voice Memo Demo, I'm Letting Go of You – Kitchen Single, The Wondarium: Songs For Kids, A Body is a Delicate House, I Fell Into the Fire, The Loneliest Snowman, I Fell Into The Fire – Limited Edition Handprinted, and 18 more. , and , .

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about

In early summer 2020, my friends from Hendersonville High School (where Taylor Swift did a brief stint in public school) near Nashville, Tennessee, began posting their senior photos on Facebook. I found one of my own, posted it, and, shortly thereafter, found this lyric and melody insisting that I pick up my guitar.

lyrics

Pretty Back Then

for the girl I was and the girls I knew

I was pretty back then, but you never told me.
When we’d sit in your car, did you even hold me?
I could have been a movie star
in a parade on a rag-top car.
I was pretty back then, but you never told me.

I was smart back then, but you never said so.
Just another teenage girl, easy come and easy go.
I won the science fair,
finished the test with time to spare.
I was smart back then, but you never said so

I had so much love –
love you couldn’t see.
I hope someone loves you now,
but I’m glad it ain’t me.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me.
No, it won’t be me.

I could fly back then, but you didn’t know it.
I had wings all that time, but I didn’t show it.
There’s someone who sees me now –
sees my wings even when I’m down
I could fly back then, but you didn’t know it.

I wrote you a letter. I’ll never send it.
No words I can say will ever mend it.
Are you in jail? Are you dead?
do you have a family now instead?
No matter how, you can’t defend it.

credits

from A Body is a Delicate House, released December 13, 2022
Written by Jeni Hankins, Lulu Wall Music, BMI.

Jeni Hankins – Vocal, Rhythm Guitar, and Trombone
Alfred John Hickling – Harmony and all other instruments

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about

Jeni Hankins London, UK

Jeni Hankins grew up in the coalfields of Appalachian in Southwest Virginia among a family of miners, moonshiners, and journalists. Her writing pulls the grit, gumption, and keen sense of observation out of that heritage like drawing water from her grandmother’s well.

In every song, Jeni’s “true sense of place shines through – old as the hills, but brand new at the same time.”
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