Rory Feek and Trisha Yearwood join forces on “Met Him in a Motel Room,” a song about redemption. It’s one of two that Feek wrote for his his upcoming album, Gentle Man, and was previously recorded solo by Yearwood for her 2014 album PrizeFighter: Hit After Hit.
The duet finds the pain-inflicted pair longing to fill the deep void in their lives through outlets ranging from alcohol and pills to a woman of the night. Finally, they find something better.
“Some people meet Him in a church / At a service on Sunday / As the preacher says the perfect words / They bow their heads to pray,” the sing. “No choir sang a sweet forgiveness tune / No, that’s no the way / That they were introduced / She met Him in a motel room.”
“It’s actually about the emptiness inside us that we try and try to fill, with money and things, with work or with alcohol. With drugs and sex and whatever else we can, only to find that that empty spot inside of us, that all that stuff is supposed to fill … doesn’t. And often, we find ourselves in a free fall, at the end, of the end, of our rope,” Feek explains of the song’s meaning on his blog, This Life I Live.
Gentle Man is Feek’s debut solo album and first release since the death of his wife, Joey Feek, who was also his partner in music in the duo Joey + Rory. She passed in 2016, following a battle with cancer that Rory chronicled through his blog. He recently shared the song “One Angel” in honor of his late wife.
Gentle Man is set for release on June 18.
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