I’m an Oklahoma girl ... my family came here thru different ways and times. The Trail of Tears for a couple of branches, horse trading, farmers ... they all had to have adventure in their blood. I grew up in north central Oklahoma but yearned to roam and ramble from early on. I loved reading books about far away people and places, and listening to the old stories my folks and family told over and again on front porches and in living rooms. These tales made me start ‘reading’ the lyrics to old mountain and country songs. I would ride my horses for hours singing and imagining I was living a hundred years ago on my north central Oklahoma plains… or that I was riding across the top of a mountain mesa. In my twenties I lived on one of these mesas outside of Telluride, CO for a couple of years. Writing songs, playing music, working at a hot springs down the mountain ... found Rosebud, my pup. Came ‘home’ to the arms of my Red Dirt family about ’96 and listened to, sang with, learned the stories in song that these men were playing around the campfires and on stages across the region. Pure, simplestorytelling, words put together that the ‘common man’ can understand. They can make me shake my head and grin, laugh, cry ... break my heart and heal it back up again. These people are true Oklahomans ... original, gritty, yarn-spinners. On the three Farm Couple CDs that Patrick Williams and I recorded, you will find at least one, if not two or three, songs by many of these dear friends. On my last solo album, Cimarron Valley Girl, I included not only many Red Dirt songs but the artists themselves in duets or singing and playing with me. Garrison Keillor asked me to join him on his Prairie Home Companion radio show (NPR) this last fall ... He was also looking for Randy Pease, who now lives in Indiana. But Randy couldn’t make the trip to Tulsa in time. I felt like I had to do a good job, not just for me, but for my Red Dirt family who have given me respect and the grace that is second nature to them. The words Cotton Shirt are in the lyrics of the first song. This song is about a girl revealing her heart to only the trees and the birds around her; she wants to say these words to ‘him’ but is too shy or unsure to say them. The simplicity of the ‘critters and the wind’ are more comfortable to her… I feel that I am not a fancy silk shirt; I am a simple, homemade cotton shirt. And, Yes ... I have red dirt on my cotton shirt. ~ monica taylor