Long Drives

This is my attempt at a cinematic song.  A movie in 6 minutes.  It started, I think, with the opening lines (songs don't always start that way) as I was, you guessed it, on a long road trip observing the white segmented lines on the road darting past our car like, well, darts missing a dartboard.

Most of my songs come from within my own experience, but this one does not (with the exception of the opening lines).  I've always admired writers who seemingly effortlessly write songs about a context that they don't live.  This is my attempt.  

I once heard Tom Waits say that songs need to have place names and weather...hence the Iowa towns and the rain.  Also, crossing a river to some form of liberation and redemption is maybe one of the most universal images...so I made a withdrawal from that bank, too.

"Long Drives"

Instrumentation: electric guitar, cello/keyboard

Highway lines shoot right past

Like darts missing the board

Rows of corn emerge from the fields

Like memories seeking not to be ignored

10 miles east of Dubuque

Driving west to see my son

The life that's next is always west

Cast a line and your sinker's the sun

Cross the Mississippi to escape a plague

Blood in the water and my son estranged

Less than a quarter tank, better stop here

As I slide in my credit card, it starts to rain

It rained so hard, I just sat in my car

And watched the clerk stock the shelves

Then I walked in, but I couldn't hide

From the fact that I'd been kidding myself

We get in cars and drive real far

All the while chasing a sinking sun

The farther you go around this globe

The closer you get to where you'd begun

I lay three bucks down before the clerk

For the coffee that would keep me awake

As I walked outside, in the reflection of the door

Was a picture in a frame saying "Happy Fathers' Day"

I stopped and I turned, the clerk unconcerned

I asked him if that was his son

He nodded and bit his lower lip

Said he hadn't seen him since September 2001

We get in cars...

Having heard the clerk, I let him get back to his work

His story swirling in my head

A Route 20 convenience store gave me much more

I came for coffee and got kinship instead

As I turned the key and pulled out to leave

The radio played the song

That I sang to my son when he was one

Before it all went wrong

As I entered Dyersville, the air got still

But my mind raced with thoughts of regret

I pulled over to look up the address

Of the man whom I hadn't yet me

I approached the house, with nothing to say

Like a child lost in the midst of a crowd

But when I rang that bell, I crossed out of that hell

Hearing the footsteps of my son's son so loud

We get in cars...