Journey Through Music

I love music.  Don’t you?  I think it’s the one medium that could really unite so many different people.  It can be used to tell a story or share a message.  Songs are sung to relay history and the passage of time or they are sung to elicit an emotion; perhaps prove a point.

Would you like to journey with me through some of the songs on my mind and how they relate to me?  I hope so.

1) Let’s start this journey with the band called Journey and their song “Faithfully”.

Highway run
Into the midnight sun
Wheels go round and round
You’re on my mind…
Restless hearts
Sleep alone tonight
Sending all my love
Along the wire

Oh, girl, you stand by me
I’m forever yours
Faithfully…

I have always enjoyed Journey, but never did I really let these words speak to me.  That is until I was on the road during the early stages of my relationship with the woman who would become my wife.  We were just starting to fall in love, and yet the road was calling me one last time in my career.  My future bride had to take a risk by letting me go fearing that I would gallivant around instead of being faithful to her.  Driving that long road to Topeka, KS, from Bartlesville, OK, this song took flight.  On that highway run, Steve Perry’s silk smooth voice sung out a vow that struck my heart like a harp string.  Anytime this song pops up on my iPhone Music player, I remember those long drives thinking about my beautiful, Amazonian goddess.

2) “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger:

I guess I lost my way
There were oh so many roads
I was livin’ to run and runnin’ to live
Never worryin’ about payin’ or how much I owed…

All those drifter’s days are past me now
I’ve got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out…

By the time I graduated high school, I was ready to run from the small town of Bristow, OK.  It took me three years to finally run away when I joined the Army.  I left that town, Oklahoma, and found myself in Washington for four years; then Missouri for another four years before returning back to Oklahoma.  Even after leaving the Army, I kept running for a few more years.  Pained by the failure of my first marriage (not the one mentioned above), and not ready to settle down yet, lost by my failures, I started travelling on the road in my civilian job.  I bounced from one town to another in Oklahoma, then Missouri, and finally Kansas before settling in my current town.  Money was no object and I burned bridges where I landed.  I really did not care.

Then I met the woman I am married to; the one whom I would have to grow up to keep.  Sometimes those drifter days come up in my mind; I think I might want to hit the road again.  Yet I have so many commitments to fulfill where I am.  I find this song to be about the struggle of growing from youth to adulthood.  No matter what stage one finds themselves in life, we are always running against the wind.

3) “Ain’t No Reason” by Brett Dennen:

There ain’t no reason things are this way.
It’s how they always been and they intend to stay.
I can’t explain why we live this way.
We do it every day…

This song pretty much assured me that no matter what comes in this world, no matter what changes there are, there are two things that are constant: 1) Us, and 2) Love.  Life can’t be explained.  I don’t have the answers as to why we exist on this planet.  I don’t have the answers why we do the things we do to one another.  I have no idea if there is a God or not; and if so why He allows certain things to happen in this lifetime.  What I do know, and what this song affirms for me, is I am here and:

[L]ove will come set me free.
Love will come set me free, I do believe.
Love will come set me free, I know it will.
Love come set me free, yes.

4) “The Walk” by Sawyer Brown:

Down a long dusty driveway
I didn’t want to go
But I set out with tears in my eyes wondering
Daddy took me by the hand
Looked out at the school bus and his little man and said
“Don’t worry boy it will be all right…”

I cannot imagine the relationship between a little boy and his father because when I was a little boy, I never got the opportunity to meet my father; to know him.  He was an obscurity to me; blocked out of my life by a hurt mother.  As a kid, I had heard this song but never understood it; the message was foreign to me.  When I left Oklahoma while stationed in the Army, I came across this song again.  I was married to my first wife, we were getting ready to start a family.  I was about to become a father.  When I heard this song for the first time as an adult, tears flooded my face.  The hurt and resentment I had towards my father was gone; turned into curiosity about the man I would never get to meet in this lifetime.  He passed away in 2005.

I started thinking about my role as a father and what it would mean to teach my kids all the things that I was never able to learn from a father.  I never got to take that walk down a long dusty driveway with my father, but I am getting to take that walk with my kids.  Then one day:

Down a long dusty driveway
This time we both would go
He had grown old and gray
And his mind was wandering
Daddy took me by the hand
Said, “I know where we’re going and I understand
Don’t worry boy it will be all right…”

My eyes water as I type those verses…

5) “Pancho and Lefty” by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard

Livin on the road my friend, is gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron
Your breathe as hard as kerosene…

Sometimes songs don’t have to convey emotion; they can just tell a good story.  “Pancho and Lefty” makes me think of westerns every time I hear it.  I picture it my head of this hardened outlaw riding into town wearing “his gun outside his pants for all the honest world to feel”.  That’s storytelling at its finest.  Perhaps one of the major components lacking from music of today is the ability to just tell a story.

6) “Thinking Out Loud” by Ed Sheeran

And, darling, I will be loving you ‘til we’re 70
And, baby, my heart could still fall as hard at 23
And I’m thinking ‘bout how people fall in love in mysterious ways
Maybe just the touch of a hand
Well, me – I fall in love with you every single day
And I just wanna tell you I am

Imagine this: I had just fallen out of a hurtful relationship.  I had resided myself to never date again; forsake all women and just enjoy being single.  God laughed.

Instead, I found myself in the house of a beautiful woman with these gorgeous cherry-brown eyes and a face that belonged on a China doll.  I had no intention of dating her; falling in love.  I just thought it would be nice to have a friend here in Bartlesville, OK.  My heart was like steel.  So there we sat on her couch watching Star Trek: First Contact (we were nerds destined to fall in love).  After the movie, we sat there awkwardly talking; we were caught in that moment between the uncertainty of whether to take the plunge or not.  Both hurting from past relationships; hesitating. 

In the moment before I was going to leave her house, I found her hand next to mine.  We grabbed hold and “maybe just the touch of a hand” was how we fell in love.  I married that cherry-brown eyed woman, and though we have had our rocky starts, I have no doubt if I make it to the age of 70 I will be loving her still.

Those were just some of the songs that came across my iTunes player today.  There are so many songs I listen to that elicits thoughts or imageries that I’ll share another time.  In the meantime, what are some of the songs you listen to, and what do they convey to you? 

Until next time, keep singing…