Nothing You Can't Lose

Album: Red Wing (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • The Steel Wheels are a four-piece Contemporary Alternative Country group based in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. This track from their breakout album Red Wing received the highest award of "Best Country Song" in the 10th Annual IMA Awards.
  • The inspiration for the song came from a book titled The Power of Now by the philosopher Eckhart Tolle that the band's lead vocalist and primary songwriter Trent Wagler read. He explained to us: "My boiled-down version of a large part of the concepts of that book is that essentially there is nothing, there is nothing besides this moment right here right now. It's encouraging all of us to really heighten our senses to what's happening in this moment and not worry about what's going to happen, not worry about what has happened. In the midst of that, in sort of unpacking that concept, he also talked about how therefore having a lot of things or having nothing doesn't matter. There's nothing that you can't lose, there's nothing that could be completely taken away from you, because as long as you have now, it's all you need to worry about."

    "I was writing it in the midst of the housing crisis," Wagler continued, "and it was some desperate times for people. It was this idea that, regardless of if things are going well for you or things are going poorly for you, you can center yourself around this idea that we could lose all this at any moment; we could encourage ourselves with that idea instead of scaring ourselves with that idea."

    "It's actually this sort of bizarre twist on a blues song," he concluded, "in that it's kind of an encouraging idea that everything can be taken away and let's have a moment of peace in that instead of a moment of fear and worry." (For more check out our interview with Trent Wagler.)

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