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Friends sometimes ask, who was the “girl in Cincinnati” who “won’t be easy to forget,” and how that’s compatible with my life-long love for Julie. Well…I guess you’ll just have to listen to the podcast to find out 🙂
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“Take the Road” first came to me on a solo drive across the US from Massachusetts to California in the fall of 1986. I left the love of my life, Julie, behind, to start a new job in the San Francisco Bay Area…she joined me there a few months later. As I crossed the country with all its beautiful scenery, memories imprinted with traces of our lives together came flooding back to keep me company. We’d first met and fallen love in the Rocky Mountains, and as I drove through them on my way to California, I promised myself that one day, Julie and I would live near the Rockies again. Four years later, we moved to rural Boulder County in Colorado, and we’ve lived there ever since. In 2027, we’ll celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.
I wanted the music for my song to be energetic, evoking the excitement and anticipation of a long road trip full of expectation. So, I started the song with a big, multi-tone synth sound rising in overlapping sections, and finishing with a trumpet flourish that calls to mind bright echoes bouncing off spectacular mountain peaks. That’s my mountain theme, and it also punctuates the musical interludes between each verse. The intro rise brings in syncopated tambourine taps and clapping that work with rapidly-strummed background guitar chords, to give a sense of wheels spinning energetically forward as I headed west over the highways and byways that lace their way across our beautiful country. Each verse is capped with a harmonized lyric, calling from the heart to “Take the Road” towards the Rocky Mountains beckoning me ahead.
I tried to include a musical element that sounded characteristic of the area I drove through in each verse; flute in New England, dulcimer in the Southern Midwest, the horn of a train passing by on the Great Plains, and a much bigger version of the Mountain Theme as I passed through the incredible grandeur of the Rocky Mountains, uplifting and expansive. That Mountain Theme also takes us through fade out at the end of the song, implying the never-ending call to me from those majestic Rockies.
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Justin is evidently a man of great understanding and a deep perception of life and the journey for each one. His intertwining of his journey with nature is incredible. What a lesson for all of us to take meaning out of that which seems mundane and maybe even laborious. He truly adds value to us simple humans with his great insight. A special talent indeed.
This profound podcast review of Justin’s brilliant composition provides inspiration toward one’s “possessing the agency to score one’s own journey.” It truly provokes “an introspective reaction,” and becomes a “vessel for one’s own wanderlust”. We each and all are so very much more enlightened for this review’s insightful and comprehensive connection of the song’s particulars that yoke life’s seemingly mundane experiences with a deeply enhanced appreciation of the significance of our very existence. We are enriched for Justin’s perceptions, his acumen, and the invaluable gift of his artistry to share the co-ordinates of his own journey within life itself. Inspiring, indeed!
Fantastic song Justin, I really like the aeriel imagery of the fields and mountains and the lyrics that evoke a feeling of ‘ I want to be there too ‘ . Your voice has an effortless quality and pitch that I like very much. I can barely sing from one octive to the next.. so very impressed!
Wow…What a lovely song. It makes you want to drop everything, grab your toothbrush and hit the road.
WOW! Looks gorgeous. A great song! Everyone should have a copy!!