The Album That Opened a Family Time Capsule: How Wilson Fairchild Honored the Songs Their Fathers Left Behind
A Project That Began With a Simple Idea
In 2017, Wilson Fairchild quietly released an album with an unassuming title: Songs Our Dads Wrote. On the surface, it sounded like a straightforward tribute project — ten tracks, most of them co-written by their fathers, Harold Reid and Don Reid of The Statler Brothers, plus one original homage called “The Statler Brothers Song.”
To fans, it looked like a respectful nod to a legendary group.
To the brothers themselves, it felt more like opening a sealed box of family history.
They did not begin with a grand plan. The idea, according to those close to them, came during a late conversation about how many songs their fathers had written that were now rarely heard outside old records and dusty playlists. The question lingered: What happens to songs when the voices that made them famous are gone?
The Drawers That Hadn’t Been Opened in Years
As work began, something unexpected happened. Old lyric sheets started appearing — pages pulled from drawers that had not been opened in decades. Some were typed. Others were scribbled in pencil. A few still had coffee stains and folded corners, as if they had once been carried in a jacket pocket on tour buses and into radio stations.
Some family members claim those papers were never meant for the public. They were ideas, half-finished verses, alternate endings. Yet, when Wilson Fairchild read them, they felt complete in a different way — not as products, but as memories.
Each song came with a story:
a line written after a long night on the road,
a chorus shaped in a hotel room,
a melody born between shows when the applause had already faded.
A Studio That Felt Strangely Full
Recording sessions took place in a quiet studio far from stadium lights and television cameras. Still, people who were there swear the room never felt empty.
Some joked that it was just nostalgia. Others described it differently. They said it felt as if the past had found a chair and sat down to listen.
The microphones captured more than vocals and guitars. They captured hesitation, respect, and something close to fear — fear of doing the songs wrong, fear of turning inheritance into imitation.
Wilson Fairchild did not try to sound like their fathers. They did not attempt to recreate the harmonies exactly as The Statler Brothers once sang them. Instead, they let their own voices carry the weight. The songs became bridges rather than replicas.
More Than a Tribute Album
Among the tracks was a new piece titled “The Statler Brothers Song.” It was not a biography. It was not a farewell. It was something quieter — a reflection on what it meant to grow up with legends who were also just fathers coming home from tour.
The album became less about preserving the past and more about answering it.
Listeners noticed the difference. These were not performances trying to outshine the originals. They sounded like conversations across time — sons replying to verses written before they were old enough to understand them.
What Their Fathers Truly Left Behind
Harold Reid and Don Reid had left more than hit records and awards. They left behind a way of writing — simple words, honest emotions, and stories that did not demand attention but earned it.
In reshaping these songs, Wilson Fairchild uncovered something personal:
their inheritance was not fame,
but responsibility.
To sing the songs was to protect them.
To change them was to keep them alive.
The album did not attempt to rewrite history. Instead, it added a footnote written in a new hand.
The Promise Inside the Music
Every track on Songs Our Dads Wrote carried more than melody. It carried a surname. It carried memory. It carried an unspoken promise that the music would not stop with one generation.
For listeners, it sounded like a tribute.
For Wilson Fairchild, it sounded like a reply.
Somewhere between what they inherited and what they reshaped, they discovered what their fathers truly gave them — and what they could finally give back.
And perhaps that is the quiet truth behind the album:
not just a collection of songs,
but a family answering its own history in harmony.