Apparently, a lot of my new songs are about things that happened a decade or more ago. I didn't do that on purpose, but as I dive further and further down the rabbit hole of the music I was listening to in the mid-2000s in the aftermath of my syllabi-and-whiskey bender last night, I'm noticing a ton of connections between that music and the music I'm currently in the midst of recording and ordering into albums.
An example: I've been listening to Radiohead all afternoon at work, and "Karma Police" just popped on, which is a song that's explicitly referenced (along with Ryan Adams' "Friends" and Springsteen's "Darkness On the Edge of Town" and the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and Bob Dylan's "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" and Chris Remo's "Ol' Shoshone") in my new song "Maps."
It's another song that doesn't have a final mix yet, but it's one of my favorites and hopefully you'll like it when I'm done. Here are the lyrics as they are now:
I left home when I was twenty-four
To leave the kid I was behind (for good)
I cut my hand on some glass the night before
So the wheel was sticky with my blood
A compass, an atlas, and a truck full of odds and ends
I was too heavy to disappear (with her)
As Ryan sang “Won’t you miss your friends?”
I cried because I wasn’t sure
And I was following the roads
As they spread out like veins from the heart of my home
Outrunning all my ghosts
The blank spaces on the map are where I’ll always roam
We settled down into the middle of nowhere
Then she said that it was time for her (to go)
I’d stand in the darkness at the edge of town and stare
I’ve never felt more alone
I fell in love, when I was twenty-six
With a sad-eyed girl who loved the road (like me)
But she had a home, and a family that she missed
We both knew it wasn’t meant to be
She slept in my bed while I sat and smoked out front
And Radiohead played Karma (Police)
I realized sometimes you can’t get what you want
But you might still get what you need
I kept following the roads
As they spread out like veins from the heart of my home
Outrunning all my ghosts
The blank spaces on the map are where I’ll always roam
The summer when I turned twenty-nine
I crossed the country on highway (two)
It was me and Neal, and a new best friend of mine
And that same old atlas to see us through
It took eight days, through forests, dunes, and plains
We drove all day and slept out in (the air)
And in the end, the wisdom of all that space
Descended on us like an asphalt prayer
Now me and my best friend, we live out in the woods
But I still hear the road singing (its song)
And every time I do, I put down all my shoulds
And hope that she’ll still come along
I'm still following the roads
As they spread out like veins from the heart of my home
Outrunning all my ghosts
The blank spaces on the map are where I’ll always roam