Folk singers Cosy Sheridan and Tom Smith closed out the 2026 Amos Fortune Forum lecture series on Friday, blending performance and insight during their presentation, “Two Songwriters at the Kitchen Table.”
The half-lecture, half-concert performance at the Jaffrey Meetinghouse invited audience members to suggest themes. Sheridan and Smith then performed corresponding original songs while dissecting the creative inspiration behind each piece.
When prompted with the topic of “nature,” Smith shared a piece written during an Adirondack camping trip. After taking a morning walk with his guitar, a large fly flew into his instrument, inadvertently plucking the B string.
“So I took out my notebook, and I said, ‘Thank you,'” Smith told the audience before playing the opening lines: “A fly struck my B string / No one was listening / But I heard the song of this place.”
Sheridan responded with a song inspired by watching a nest of caterpillars attempt to cross a road, exploring the vulnerability and courage of small plans in an unpredictable world.
“Little caterpillar with your tiny plan / To strike out across the land / It’s a blind leap / It’s the hope that we keep / When you are crossing open ground / Keep your chin up and your head down / And hope that you know the blessing of an open road,” Sheridan sang.
She reflected on playing the song following a hospital visit. “I thought, ‘I’m just a caterpillar trying to cross the road.’ That’s what we all are. We don’t know if the car is coming. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The duo shared songs on aging, economics, current events, and personal metaphors. Sometimes funny, such as Sheridan musing on nose piercings after discovering her housesitter’s nose ring in the bathroom, and sometimes poignant, such as Smith likening a sugar maple planted with his wife to their 50-year marriage.
The performers also offered advice about their songwriting process, including having the song progress or change.
“If your first verse says, ‘Hi, my name is John,’ your second verse should not say, ‘Hi, my name is John,'” said Sheridan, sharing a piece of advice once given to her. “For me, what makes any song have life is that it goes somewhere you didn’t expect.”
Smith said one of the things that makes a good song is how it “serves the singer.” He said he likes when the song takes a turn, and the listener can find new meaning. “That’s a really great technique for a songwriter, to make sure that when you’re writing a song, that you’re writing it in such a way that it doesn’t say the same thing all the way through. It doesn’t hit like a song that somehow progresses,” said Smith.
Last Friday’s presentation was the final Amos Fortune Forum of the season. The series will return next summer with weekly lectures at the Jaffrey Meetinghouse every Friday night. For more information, visit amosfortune.org.