In This Room

This small hotel overlooking the sea

Now crumbling, condemned and alone;

I come not to watch it die but to walk inside of

And talk with, and listen to, just one very special room ~

This room.

This empty, bare, forlorn and alone room.

Where the sun calls each day but there’s no one at home room

Well, the years have been dragging their weary feet along

Every wall down, at last, to end

In the sunbleached path on the floor

From the broken window across the room and out the open door.

But I still can feel the warmth and glow

Where all the love this room could hold

Now falls into dust with the long ago

And so I listen.

But all I can hear is the muted sound of a lonely heartbeat crying

Somewhere in the shadows where you left it

In this room.

And the memories come tumbling through my mind

Like the fallen leaves in the autumn wind

And I open my arms to welcome them as they gather here

In this room.

And I’m trying to remember how long it has been

And where did it start and how did it end.

I can’t seem to recall a tear or even an angry word

Or a broken vow, for none were made.

Or did someone just forget to come home to

This room?

This now is the start and the end of forever room,

Where tomorrow may come and again it may never room.

So, I walk to the window, look out to the sea

And the sea is the same as it used to be ~

So blue! So very blue!

And I let this tired body of mine fill the very space that once was you

And I feel you breathe inside of me,

And my mind is a tangle of hopeless dreams

And this longing within me has nowhere to go.

And so I listen.

But all I can hear is the muted sound of a lonely heartbeat crying

Somewhere in the shadows where you left it ~

In this room.

And the memories come tumbling through my mind

Like the fallen leaves in the autumn wind

And I open my arms to welcome them as they gather here

In this room.

When Bob Nolan retired from the Sons of the Pioneers, he stopped writing western songs. As he expressed it, he took the saddle leather out of his work. "In This Room", so different from his western songs, is as apt today as it was when he wrote it. Perhaps one day someone will pick it up, create a modern arrangement for it and record it. It's a keeper.

You are listening to a demo by Dave Bourne as you read this page. You can also listen to the original but very poor tape recording of Bob singing it in his livingroom in 1976. Dave Bourne made his demo directly from the lead sheet a few years before we knew Bob had been taped singing it during that interview. Dave's arrangement was remarkably close to the way Bob sang it.