"Traveling Alone" by Jason Isbell

Singalong 009: A date with Route 81

“I've been fighting second gear for fifteen miles or so / Trying to beat the angry snow”

There was a period of years when I was struggling emotionally on a level well beyond what I'd call "depression and anxiety". A confluence of factors in my late 20s/early 30s had set off a cycle in my behavior patterns that resulted in my living in a very dark fog for basically all of my 30s.

Addiction was definitely a factor, but I'm blessed in that I don't like alcohol very much. It's easy for me to stop drinking. What I had going on instead was a deep self-hatred and a desperation to find the magical music that would save me from myself. I treated jobs and relationships like they were entirely disposable, bumped around like an idiot and even found myself without a mailing address for two and a half years. Too broke to live anywhere, too broken to recognize the problem.

“And I know every town worth passing through / But what good does knowing do with no one to show it to?”

"Road homeless," I would say, “not street homeless". Hey I was on tour, man, playing gigs. No time to live anywhere, running from place to place, from coffeehouse gig to coffeehouse gig, conveniently making next to no money and leaning exhaustingly into the hospitality of friends and local music fans around the US, South America and in Europe.

I slept in my car only once, but that single rainy night at a rest stop on Route 81 was what finally turned me around.

“I've grown tired of traveling alone”

The thing they don't say enough about "hitting bottom" is that everyone chooses exactly where their bottom is, and the bottom is different for each person. In my case, the bottom was where my lack of self-respect collided with the limit of my overgrown tolerance for squalor. As it turns out, I'd also grown tired of traveling alone.

Tired. And without the career traction of Jason Isbell. Older than him also. Yikes.

When I first heard this song, I might have cried. I felt so seen. The melody makes for a good cry, there are not too many words to weigh it down. And they count. The words count. There's no doubt about what they mean.

“I quit talking to myself and listening to the radio a long, long time ago”

I'd heard rumblings about how great an impact Isbell's record, "Southeastern", was making from all sides. I’d toured a bunch in the South, where if somebody's music stands out from the crowd people won't stop talking about it. But my dirty secret of that time was that by then I'd stopped listening to music for pleasure. Entirely.

For years I could not begin to hear Jason Isbell, nor could I hear anything else. The pain between my ears and in my heart had become unbearable enough that I could not even listen to records. Until I had to.

When I finally slowed down enough to actually listen to "Southeastern", my healing took off. I transcribed the entire thing into a notebook. I put it on to go to sleep. I woke up to it. This flow lasted for a few months, while I gathered what was left of my road life from the apartment in Pennsylvania and moved my ass back to New York City to start a top-40 wedding band.

“Painting the outside lane, I'm tired of answering to myself / Heart like a rebuilt part, I don't know how much it's got left”

A wedding band? Yes. A wedding band. I started a wedding band and I joined a gospel choir.

My reasoning behind the pivot was thus: "I have nothing but these musical skills. I have no resources, I lack discipline and I am far from my community. But there are people out there who are deeply enough in love that they are committing to each other in front of their people. They DO have the resources and the discipline to arrange a ceremony for themselves, for their family and friends to commemorate and crystalize this commitment. If I can find some of these people and put my musical skills to their service at their wedding ceremony? Maybe I can shift my own life. I might finally gather some resources and community of my own."

I might even, God willing, find love. That's what I told myself.

“Won't you ride with me, won't you ride”

There was a basic math element as well: instead of driving four hours each way to play for 45 minutes, I could drive 45 minutes each way and play for four hours. A positive reversal. For someone who lives to play like me, that part was attractive. I didn't care if it was cover songs. I still don’t.

I didn't know if it would work, but I promised myself that I would try. And I had just about nothing to lose. Being tired enough of traveling alone will do that to a person. So I moved to New York City for the third time in my life, with a clearer sense of mission and purpose than I’d ever had before. It was the spring of 2013 and I was about to turn 40. I had hope.

It would be nice if I could say that the wedding band worked out, but it didn’t.

I found some truly great musicians to play in it. I connected well with some couples, and we did in fact play many great wedding gigs. That part was easy. We won an award on The Knot. I even briefly became financially solvent.

But at the end of the day I am poorly suited to that type of music work. The business side of it ground me down. My own discipline was insufficient to meet the demands of what is ultimately an extremely demanding industry.

The folks who thrive in the wedding band business are some of the highest-performingest, thickest-skinnedest professionals I've ever encountered. I had to face reality and admit that I am not one of them.

Too sensitive, too deliberate. Maybe too sincere.

But I got my crash course in that business, and it was all worth something. I rekindled some professional relationships, created some new ones, burned out a few others. I grew up a ton. We performed hundreds of songs for thousands of people… and what was left of my creative music flame actually went completely out in the process.

I reached the end. A totally different “bottom”. Extinguished and exhausted, I quit music completely for a while.

One thing, however, did work out. The most important thing:

For the last ten years I have been in love. It's a real relationship, nourishing me on so many levels that it makes me almost forget all of my previous attempts at dating and relationships. She and I have each other's back, we grow together and we really enjoy life together. We fight just enough to keep it real, but at the beginning and end of each day we are here. We are together.

And I would not have even come into contact with Kerri if I hadn't first chosen to pull myself out of that lost place. To step through an unknown doorway into a space I distrusted, choosing for once to have my own back and learn something new.

I'm no longer traveling alone on Route 81, and no longer playing at weddings. But neither am I afraid of doing those things. Because I know how to be alone, and how to sing through it to get to the other side.

The right song will teach you everything you need.