“You Were on My Mind This Morning” was written by Tim O’Brien of the band Hot Rize. By his own account it was a song he had written years earlier and set aside, returning to it again and again until Hot Rize finally recorded it in 2014.
The song is a quiet meditation on a love that lingers in the memory. From the first moment of waking, the singer finds the absent person already in his thoughts; the lyric stays with that gentle, persistent ache of someone who will not leave the mind.
The song appeared on a Hot Rize album made decades into the band’s history.