Tag: Karen Peck & New River

TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

Two years after losing their mother, Karen Peck Gooch and Susan Peck Jackson have turned grief into melody. The sisters and the rest of Karen Peck & New River just released “Mama Knows,” a song built from a single, ordinary moment that became something larger.

The story starts with an azalea tree. Their mother, Myrtle Sue Tench, planted it years ago in her front yard, and it grew into something towering, something people noticed. Every spring it bloomed bright pink, and every spring Mrs. Tench photographed it, often posing beside it herself. The tree became a kind of ritual, a marker of the season, a reason to step outside and pay attention.

This year, the ritual continued without her. Their sister Sandra sent a text to Karen and Susan: mama’s tree is blooming. That was it, nothing more, but it landed differently than any ordinary garden update. “I thought, oh, I bet mama, if she could say anything to me right now, she would say, oh, these flowers are so beautiful, and they smell so, so beautiful,” Karen recalls.

That imagined sentence, equal parts loss and comfort, became the emotional core of “Mama Knows.” The song doesn’t try to explain grief so much as sit inside it, the way a blooming tree can hold a person’s memory without saying a word.

For Karen and Susan, music has become the language for what’s hard to say out loud. Their mother is gone, but the tree still blooms, the pictures still get taken, and now there’s a song to go along with them.