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The Backstory
Summer of 2000. I was eighteen at my parents' kitchen table in Wilmington, telling them I was not going to college. Not later. Not maybe. I was leaving on a forty-two-foot ketch with Dillon Pruett, a dock man with a bad knee, clean knots, and no patience for boys who talked too much. He paid me twenty dollars a day to coil line and stay useful.
My mother cried. My father called it foolish. My friends laughed until they saw I meant it. Then they shook my hand like I had enlisted in a war nobody had named yet. I shoved off on a Tuesday. Nobody came to watch. That suited me fine.
Eleven days later I stepped onto a dock in Key West with salt in my boots and a grin I could not beat off my face. I worked where I could. Decks. Charters. Shrimp boats. Hull patches. Bad coffee. Worse pay. Emails came from home when I could find a library computer. Come back. Get straight. Stop wasting yourself. I wrote back and told them I was fine. Mostly true.
I wrote this song more than twenty years later on a dock in Beaufort, after some neighborhood kids ran home for supper and left me alone with the creek light. I thought about my father, gone since 2009. Good man. Right about plenty. Wrong about this. I picked up the old Martin and the song came out before dark. Some songs have to be chased. This one had just been waiting for me to quit arguing with it.
- Echo Thatch, 2024, Beaufort, North Carolina
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
Mama cried when I told her,
"No dorm room, just open water."
Dad said, "Son, that ain't a plan—
You can't sail into a future, man."
My buddies packed for frat house nights,
I packed charts and fishing lines.
They shook their heads when I shoved off—
Thought I'd lost my mind, but I just smiled it off.
[Chorus]
Call me crazy, call me wild,
A barefoot dreamer, a runaway child.
But I had salt on my skin, stars in my eyes,
Trading textbooks for the tide.
They said I'd regret it, waste of time—
But the breeze said, "Boy, you'll be just fine."
Now I raise my glass to the ocean wide,
And shout "Crazy was the right kind!"
[Verse 2]
Docked in Key West, worked the decks,
Learned to live with no regrets.
Sunburned love and a pirate's grin,
Chased the wind like it was kin.
Heard 'em say, "He'll come home broke."
But I cashed my chips in sunsets and smoke.
Letters from home said I should turn around,
But I'd already found what can't be found in town.
[Chorus]
Call me crazy, call me wild,
A barefoot dreamer, a runaway child.
But I had salt on my skin, stars in my eyes,
Trading textbooks for the tide.
They said I'd regret it, waste of time—
But the breeze said, "Boy, you'll be just fine."
Now I raise my glass to the ocean wide,
And shout "Crazy was the right kind!"
[Bridge]
Now the kids bring their kids just to hear me talk—
About the storms I faced, the ports I docked.
Their eyes go wide, their jaws all drop,
And I laugh, sittin' on this weathered dock.
Never got a cap and gown,
But I got tales that go way down.
And when they ask if I'd do it all again—
I just grin...
[Final Chorus]
Call me crazy, call me wild,
Still a barefoot dreamer, a saltwater child.
With a compass heart and a gypsy soul,
And a sail that never folds.
They said I'd regret it, waste of time—
But I drank deep from the ocean's wine.
Now I tip my hat to that younger guy,
And say "Crazy was the right kind!"
[Outro]
Crazy! (Crazy!)
Right kind! (Right kind!)
Sailed away, and I found my life—
Yeah, crazy was the right kind!