History of Dreams

In high school, I had a couple friends I did everything together with. I’m still friends with one of them, Chris, and the other one just disappeared without explanation. But in Mrs. Strain’s science class, in the free moments between her incessant iron rule, we made a plan: we were going to take the summer after high school and travel to the America West. We would build a big bed in the back of ghost friend’s truck and spend the summer cooking our own food on the tailgate.

Maybe it was because my dad was always talking about biking across the States, or maybe it was from watching Forest Gump run to Monument Valley, or hearing about Hippies in San Francisco in Recent American History class, but I always had this dream to drive across the country, visit every state, and see all the National Parks. The places in movies, textbooks, and the stories of other people called to me.

Graduation came and went and the plan fizzled. But the dream stayed alive inside my heart.

Years later, I was making similar plans with my partner at the time. It was our fifth year together and we wanted to do something grand. We even had it planned out how much we would need to save, where we would visit, and where we would camp. But instead we broke up.

The next time I had the opportunity to go beyond the Mississippi, I took things into my own hands. This waiting on others stuff was going to keep me at home working my life away. My friends were getting married in San Antonio. Instead of flying, I drove with another friend, Aubrey, to the wedding via New Orleans. After the wedding, she’d move on to somewhere else, and I would go farther West. I told the wedding party and the other guests that I loved them, left at sunset during the reception, and drove through the rest of Texas as the Milky Way haunted above me. I stopped outside of El Paso thinking I would sleep, but instead, the blood of adventure pumped through me and I marathoned all the way to the Grand Canyon before the next sunset. Twenty six hours straight of driving through landscapes only imaginable in my dreams.

That trip changed me in ways I am still uncovering. I still have vivid flashbacks from those drives through the Gila National Forest, Million Dollar Highway, and Monument Valley, dreams where I am back there in the rocky gulches of Canyonlands or crying on the side of the road at the godliness of the Vermillion Cliffs. I knew the healing power of the road, and I needed more.

My next trip was the summer of 2015. I was enamored with the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition and planned my drive to follow them loosely. The trip was going to take me through Missouri, South Dakota, Wyoming, up through Montana, across Idaho, and Washington, to the coast where the ended in Northern Oregon. After that, it was up to me. I packed a bunch of clothes, my unicycle, a guitar, and a small Yamaha Portasound I found in my girfriend’s aunt’s house after her death.

I wrote a song everyday on that trip. Then when I got back home, I kept writing about that trip. Years later I keep writing songs about that trip. In fact, right now, I’m typing about that trip. Some of those songs will never see the light day, like one I wrote about the divorce I was going through. Others are going on Elseworthy, the album that has been forming over the last decade, somehow morphing from nothingness into the powerful artwork it is now.

Three threads weave through this album: Journey, Location, and Relationship. Like their counterparts, Plot, Setting, and Character, these themes are the impetus of every great adventure. Three styles emerge on the album also represent these pillars. The hypnotic rhythm of the car, the quiet longings of lost love, and the grandiosity of landscape.

This unfolding journey will be my gift to others as I reopen the journals of my adventures in these songs and stories about them. My hope is that these songs inspire others to go on their own adventures to find the thing that heals them, that they stop waiting on others to make the journey with them, and that they take their life changing experiences and make art with them. My love for this country is big, and my love for the people here is even bigger. This album is my declaration of that love.