There’s an old yellowed cassette, one of many, on the shelf above my worn-out turntable in the living room in Helmond. The label’s ink is nearly faded, but the scrawled words are still just readable: “I’m Not Lisa – Jesse Colter”. That’s a song most country folk know—the pretty heartbreak anthem from 1975. But just to the left of that, the dust settles thicker, and the ink tells a rarer story: “Homecoming – Tom T. Hall – 1969.”
Most folks today hardly know Tom T. Hall, and if they do, they’ll grin and hum the chorus to “I Love” or tip their hat to “The Year Clayton Delaney Died.” But it’s his lesser spun, tender ballad called “Homecoming” that calls me back every September as the leaves start to yellow the willow trees outside my Helmond window. While it squeaked into the lower rungs of the Top 10 in its day, it never found the lasting radio airplay of Hall’s other works, and in Europe, let alone the Netherlands, it always felt like a secret passed down in smoky backrooms between friends.
The year 1970 was the one when I first heard “Homecoming.” I was seventeen, a head full of future and fingers stiff with beginner’s calluses from my old guitar—one I bought secondhand at a shop on Steenweg in Eindhoven. Every Saturday I’d tune in to American Armed Forces Radio, twisting the dial with nervous excitement and a touch of longing. One foggy autumn morning, the DJ, his voice grainy as a gravel road, said, “Here’s something for the wayward sons,” and then a lone acoustic guitar hummed through the static, as familiar as bread on the table.
“I guess I should’ve written, Dad, to let you know that I was coming home…”
Those first lines caught in my throat. They were as matter-of-fact as a letter you always meant to send but never did. Tom T. Hall’s voice, unadorned, rolled out of the cheap speakers and it was like he missed his own father in real-time, word by word.
I played that tape over and over in my cramped Helmond bedroom, curtains drawn against sharp autumn winds, smelling the onion soup Ma was always making because it was cheap and would linger for days. There’s something in the heartache of “Homecoming” that tastes a little like waiting in the kitchen for a mother who isn’t angry, just quietly disappointed.
To me, “Homecoming” isn’t just a song; it’s an old photograph tucked between bills. The story goes—a hard-living, rambling son returns after years of stubborn silence to his aging father’s farm. No glory, no fireworks, just two men standing awkwardly near a battered pickup and years of unsaid apologies. Tom wrote:
“And I wonder if you’ve changed at all, if you’re still the man you used to be…
Because I sure changed since I left, and, Dad, I miss your company.”
The chorus isn’t the kind you sing out. It’s the kind you mutter so you won’t choke. There’s an entire novel in the way Tom spells out visiting his father’s grave:
“Sorry that I couldn’t be there when they buried Ma…”
A Dutch farm boy, dreaming in English and worrying about money, I recognized that uneasy distance. My own father had never set foot beyond Gemert, let alone Tennessee, but the bones of fathers and sons ring the same wherever cobblestones wear old. I saw my papa in the rows he plowed, his brown arms, the way he narrowed his eyes in the sunlight. Yet I also carried my secrets—American country music and stories sung softly in a language he’d never known.
What makes “Homecoming” so rare—so unsettling—is that there’s no neat resolution. There’s no cinematic reunion, no forgiving embrace. Tom T. Hall sits in a quiet house, the chair creaking beneath him, and he simply tells the truth:
“It’s been a long time, dad, since I’ve heard you talk about the farm
I guess you heard about the man I’m supposed to be…”
He’s half-proud and half-sorry, and I don’t know a truer emotion. It’s the human mix at the heart of all country music—a place where regret and pride crouch shoulder to shoulder.
Years later, I’d start my own band, playing Friday nights in corner rooms from Brabant to Groningen. Most crowds wanted Rhinestone Cowboys and Johnny Cash, but once in a while—usually late, when the smoke was thick and the whiskey thicker—I’d hush the noise and pick the slow rolling chords of “Homecoming.” Dutch folks, unfamiliar with Kentucky fields, felt it too. I’d see it in their eyes—the way someone who spent years in Amsterdam, maybe estranged from family or their own past, went suddenly quiet and humble. The song crossed languages, because every son and daughter in the world—no matter where they run—carries a memory, and a measure of sorrow, for the family they can’t quite reach.
The rare beauty of “Homecoming” is how it refuses to promise redemption, only recognition. It is the hand-written letter never sent but always waiting, folded at the bottom of your jacket. I’ll never be able to listen to the lines—
“I’m sorry that I turned out this way—
I hope I’m not that much of a let down, Dad…”
—without feeling seventeen again, wondering what my father thought of that lost, guitar-obsessed boy, if he ever did.
So here’s to the unsung songs—the ones that don’t get the glory, but keep our secrets safe. When I pull out that old, worn cassette and the music shivers through my Helmond home, I am both far away and right here, both a son and a father, and “Homecoming” is still waiting for me, every time.
Yours in memory and melody,
Kroes den Bock