Rita Lanham was born in Bardstown, Ky. She grew up on a farm where she did many farm chores such as milk cows, set tobacco, and help her parents raise her 9 younger siblings. She eventually went off to college graduating with education degrees in Music, Math, and English. My father met her at her family’s thanksgiving party one year, having been invited by my uncle. He asked her out on a date, then on more dates, and eventually they got married. She became Rita Lanham Dobson, and gave birth to my two sisters, and then me.
I picked up the guitar when I was 16. I didn’t write a full song until I was 20. I would show my songs only to my mom. They were very personal to me and often helped me deal with stress in my life. She would tell me what she thought of them and ask me who or what they were about. Despite how awful some of the songs were, my Mom loved every one of them. She would often act as if it was some kind of miracle that I could write a song at all. This always made me feel like i could do anything.
In spring 2012, my mom was diagnosed with Stage IV Breast Cancer. Despite me telling her I wanted to, she told me not to come home, to continue at school and do the best I could. So, I did. While I was away at school, I would write songs in my bedroom. I figured I could show her them once she got better. But she never did. Early in the morning on May 8th 2012, after two months of fighting, my mother passed away. She was the most beautiful person I have ever known.
I miss her every day.
This album is dedicated to my mom, compiled of the songs I wrote during her fight with breast cancer all the way up to about a year after she was diagnosed with the exception of two songs. “After all” and “empty” are important to me, for having meanings that seemed to have come full circle to mean something different than what they did originally, which is pretty cool.
It’s time for me to let this thing go. I’ve been working for a year on it trying to make it something close to perfection and I have become so mentally and emotionally tired that I fear i might ruin it soon. It will never be what i want it to be because what i want it to be is worthy of my mother’s memory. She was just too great of person for me to reach with my music and I’ve come to accept that i can never make this album worthy. I think she would of been okay with that.