Warren Barfield

"There's ten hours between us tonight And I feel like my heart will break
'Cause it's been way too long Since I've last seen your face
What I'd give if you were here with me now And I was lost in your touch
If I know my heart There's nothing I've ever wanted so much
but to love you, just to love you, it's all I wanna do"

Megan and I will celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary this year. These days, we are thankfully together more than we are apart. We have made choices that make it possible to share as much time together as we can. But there was a time when distance was a constant enemy that kept me from the only person I could love for a thousand years and wish for a thousand more.

When Meg and I met, I was traveling around the country in my 1993 spearmint green manual 4-cylinder Mustang. That car, my guitar, and the contents of a suitcase were all I owned in the world. It wasn’t uncommon for me to drive eight hours to play a gig for 20 to 40 people, make $100 if I was lucky, sleep on someone’s couch, wake up the next morning, and do it all over again. Windows rolled down in my Mustang. Gas was under $1 a gallon. A large binder full of compact disks and a portable CD player—the anti-skip version—tethered to my car’s sound system through the magic of a cassette wired to the output of the disk player and inserted in my tape deck. Free as a flying bird.

What that flying bird did not foresee was the girl he was about to meet when he landed in Mansfield, OH.

Before I met Megan, the thought of marriage made me nervous. Even as a kid, I was wary of it. Although my parents modeled a committed relationship, I had seen plenty of examples of heartbreak and learned the lesson early that love was not to be trusted. I had stated proudly and often that I was not interested in marriage.

In my mind, relationships were temporary. Songs are forever. Why write a song about something that might not be true in six months?

So I didn’t write love songs. I wrote about faith. I wrote about doubt. I wrote about life and not love.

For a guy who didn’t write love songs, I knew my heart had it out for me when I sat with my guitar and wrote the lyric, “I know you’re the one, it just feels so right. Would it be okay with you if I loved you for the rest of my life?”

Uh oh.

I was at my parents’ house that night. Megan was a 10-hour drive away in Mansfield, Ohio. She was flying in the next day to meet my family for the first time. I wrote the song 10 Hours for her and wondered, Should I just keep it to myself?

A song doesn’t live if you don’t share it.

Maybe this one didn’t need to live.

The next day, I picked Megan up from the Raleigh-Durham Airport, and we drove to Wilmington, North Carolina Beach. A few weeks earlier, I had upgraded my compact Mustang to a more road-warrior-appropriate ‘97 Jeep Cherokee. We locked into four-wheel drive and drove out on the beach. I had my guitar in the back and a kite. Options.

We flew the kite.

Eventually, I caved to love, grabbed the guitar, and the song 10 Hours came to life.

“I’ll hold you close to my heart and I pray you feel my love, until that day when time or space will never again separate us.”

The Jeep wasn’t as road-warrior-ready as I thought, but I still have the guitar, the kite, and the girl.

Fast forward two years—we were married, and I was in Nashville making my first album with a record label. I was writing and working with award-winning veterans in the music industry. I had a team of people around me guiding me in everything from what to wear to what songs to record. I was writing multiple songs a day in search of the best songs to put on my self-titled release. Conservatively, I would say I wrote 100 songs to get the 10 that the label approved for the record budget.

As the list came together, I asked if I could record the song 10 Hours for Megan. She sacrificed so much in support of me chasing my dream. She spent many nights as a newlywed with her husband away writing, recording, touring. I wanted to give her song a place to live on, as I knew the odds that I would ever make another in an industry where more people are forgotten than remembered were unlikely.

The record label didn’t think it was the right move to put the song on the album. It was not a “great song.” It wasn’t a hit. It had no chance of being played on the radio.

After a tense conversation, it was agreed that it would be the 11th track on the album—but only with the minimum amount of budget going toward it. So a mic was set up, and I recorded the guitar and vocal. That was it.

For the record (no pun intended), I don’t disagree with them. As far as songwriting technique goes, it is the weakest on the album. It is not a hit—whatever that is. And radio never played it.

But man, am I so glad that song lives on that album forever.

It has done its work. It has inspired others to let love live. To push past the distance that tries to separate us and seek connection.

I have friends today that I would not have if it weren’t for this song.

Twenty-four years after I wrote it in my parents’ house, I am still hearing stories about it.

I got an email last week from someone who said the first dance at their wedding was to 10 Hours. They are celebrating their 20-year anniversary, and she wanted to know if I would write out the lyrics so she could have them framed as an anniversary gift.

They have five kids. She works in child welfare, helping families navigate abuse.

She sent me a picture of a simple text tattooed on her forearm that she says transports them back to that dance 20 years ago in a church gymnasium when they started their forever together.

It says…

10 HOURS.

The song lives.

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*** Scroll down to watch an acoustic performance of my song 10 Hours.  

-Warren Barfield