The Shop Out Back

Behind the story

Why this song exists

“The Shop Out Back” exists because if you wanted to find my dad, there were two places you looked. At the kitchen table drinking his coffee. Or out in the shop. Dad owned our Montana property from 1977 until he died. We had a big four-bedroom tri-level house on an acre, with a garage that served us throughout my childhood. Dad could build and fix just about anything. He had woodworking equipment, a lathe, and more tools than any reasonable human being probably needed—often two or three of the same damn thing. Eventually, Dad decided he needed more room. He wanted the garage for the cars and mechanical work, and he wanted a dedicated place for his woodworking. So he built the shop out back. And I helped him. I was a young adult by then, and I helped Dad rough in that building. That’s important to me because the shop wasn’t simply something Dad owned. It was something we put our hands on together. Once it was built, that’s where his woodworking equipment went. That’s where projects happened. That’s where we worked. That’s where you could almost always find him. But the thing I remember most isn’t any particular tool or project. It’s how that place felt. Dad’s shop was welcoming. It was comfortable. It was never one of those places where the kids were afraid to touch anything or worried that Dad would yell because they were in his territory. We learned there. Dad taught us constantly. Yes, he came from the IBM world. And yes, he taught us woodworking, tools, cars, building and how to figure out why something wasn’t working. But Dad’s knowledge never stopped at what somebody might call “man’s work.” He taught us how to cook. He taught us how to sew. He taught us how to crochet. When I sang with the Andersonettes, the specialty choir at C.R. Anderson School, Dad even sewed my Andersonette dress himself. And when my grandparents died, of all the things he could have wanted, what Dad wanted was Grandma’s sewing machine. That’s who he was. He did things with his hands. If something needed to be built, he built it. If something needed to be fixed, he fixed it. If something needed to be cooked, sewn or made, he learned how to do that too. There wasn’t men’s work and women’s work in Dad’s world. There was work. Get it done. And he raised us with that same expectation: don’t limit yourself because somebody decided a particular skill belongs to somebody else. Learn. Try. Use your hands. Use your brain. Figure it out. Looking back, it’s astonishing how much that man managed to cram into our heads. And so much of it happened simply by being beside him. That’s why “The Shop Out Back” isn’t really about a workshop. It’s about where Dad was. It’s about knowing that if he wasn’t sitting at that kitchen table with his coffee, you could walk out back, open that shop door, and find him there. Working. Building. Teaching. Being Dad. I helped him build that shop. But all those years inside it, Dad was helping build us.