Traveling through Eastern PA yet again – our music is as always varied and indicative of three different personas – from Anthony da Costa to Saint Vincent to Bon Jovi to Acacia Sears to Megadeth to Kala Farnham… music is an amazing thing. We were talking about it on and off the stage yesterday, about traveling all over this amazing country and meeting all sorts of people – people who don’t match up with us emotionally, spiritually, religiously, politically – all those many things that make people so vehemently angry, ferociously hateful, blindly, loudly venomous – and yet we can all come together around music.
I don’t believe it’s a universal language, but it’s a Hell of a conversation starter.
Old Number 90 or “Great Western no. 90” once upon a time pulled sugar beet trains from Loveland, CO. I Love that we’re driving that way now. She was built in Philadelphia in 1924. And she’s beautiful. What I was up to.
Bon Jovi’s “Never Say Goodbye” was a really emotional song for me in high school – I could see the end of everything I’d ever known looming on the horizon and knew that all of my friends would soon be going their separate ways. For better or for worse that’s pretty much what’s happened. Facebook has put some of us on one another’s radar, a photo teacher’s party, a funeral here, a random crossing of paths there – but when it comes down to it most all of those social ties have dissolved.
It makes me wonder at pop songs and their wisdom. For as much as I’ve come to understand that the 20-somethin’ rockers of Bon Jovi didn’t do all their own arranging back in the 80s, I still get the impression they did most of the songwriting, and it makes me wonder at how they could’ve possibly understood enough about their end-of-high-school days to write about it so poignantly, romanticizing all of those “coming of age” moments that I never went through, but seem to be so ubiquitous in most people’s growing-up tales.
I wonder how those stories have changed in the past decade or so. Our culture has changed SO much and SO fast recently. I only have the tales of my older friends and parents and the pop culture movies floating around as evidence, but it seems like whether you grew up in America in the 50s, 60s, 70s or 80s – barring the specifics of the bands, the drugs of choice, the brand of the car and the war in the background, those “coming of age” stories of harmless rebellion and slow loss of innocence haven’t changed that much. You might even be able to get some of the 90s in there, but I don’t think it’s just an aging viewpoint that says that everything’s different now. That coming of age comes faster and from stranger experiences – the drugs are harder now, the porn is too, and the idea of losing one’s virginity in the back of Daddy’s Caddy still seems trashy but also somehow quaint.
My mind is wandering as we make our way through cornfields somewhere south of Nazareth. Heather’s guitar was born not too far from here. When my parents first started taking my brother and I out along these roads there was nothing else here, but now the cornfields are mere punctuation to rows of townhomes and strip malls encroach on Roadside America. Oh, and I type on this beautiful laptop while fielding emails and tweets and Facebook messages on my phone.
It’s a beautiful day but we’re in Amish country and the only way you can tell is a couple of road signs and there’s something awry with that.
Great Wester No. 90 under full steam and dragging us on the road to Paradise – she’s working hard and hauling us at close to 20mph. She’s loud and noisy and smokey and she’s beautiful.- There’s a special kind of infinity that comes with railroads and highways – it’s like nothing else. Just these beautiful lines that run to the horizon implying that you can really make a run for it and actually, maybe – get away. It’s the inspiration of touring, of jailbreaks, of roadtrips, of dreaming. Living the dream. The dream is decidedly loud. parading past us as No. 90 switch ends on our train we were passed swiftly by a high-speed passenger train. They don’t know what they’re missing. the eternal conundrum of agriculture and industry. A wonderful day with my beautiful band.
