“22” is one of the hardest stories I’ve ever put into words. I’ve never really liked calling what I write “songs,” and I especially don’t like calling these words “lyrics.” To me, they’re memories. They’re faces. They’re names. They’re places and moments that somehow found a permanent home inside my head.

Many of my most personal stories come when I’m in the middle of a bad period of depression, or when I’m just starting to find my way out of one. That’s when my mind seems to wander back to my Army days and Vietnam. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m remembering it. It feels like I’m there again. Faces I haven’t seen in more than fifty years become clear. Names come back. Conversations come back. Things I thought I had buried a long time ago suddenly walk right through the door.

Some of those faces belonged to men I served beside. Some belonged to veterans I came to know later in life. And far too many of those faces are no longer here. Some survived the war only to lose another battle years after they came home. That is what “22” means to me.

It isn’t really about a number. It’s about the human beings behind that number. The veteran sitting alone at two in the morning. The brother or sister who learned how to survive combat but never quite learned how to silence what followed them home. The empty chair. The unanswered phone. The name somebody still thinks about decades later.

I’m an old soldier now, but there are nights when I’m seventeen again, wearing that uniform and looking into faces that never really left me. “22” came from one of those nights. These aren’t just words I wrote. They are people I remember. And I don’t want another face added to them.