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The next re-released song on the docket to discuss is “High Desert” from the Stars Turn Me On album GoldRush from 2012. STMO is my project with guitarist and riff machine Justin Caucutt. Most of the songs on GoldRush are very stripped down. For this one, I played very simple drums, with a rattle in one hand. Then, I think I remember singing as I drummed. I don’t think this is that vocal take here, but I think I wanted to sing as I played in order to keep the sort of ritualistic beat tied to the lyrical intent. Judah Collins played lap steel, Justin on guitar.
I remember the germination of the lyrics. At the time, Zepparella had a tour manager, Jim Stewart, who bought the van I now own. He was amazingly handy and tricked the whole thing out for us. This meant that I didn’t have to drive all the time. I love driving, but not driving enabled me to work on other stuff as we toured, which meant lyrics.
We were driving East on I80 through Nevada, probably having played in Reno and heading toward Salt Lake City. For those who have never made that trip, it is pretty spectacularly beautiful. First, you head through Tahoe, which is lovely, and then from Reno you hit this empty landscape that is like the moon, long mountain ranges and wide vistas that play tricks with your eyes. I’ve driven through when snowy, and when tiny flowers bloom across the desert. It’s always fantastic.
As you get further East, near Salt Lake City, the landscape gets a little rockier, but still there are those great sweeping spaces. I feel lucky to know the interstates of this country so well. The I90 is pretty great, especially through the Dakotas and then Eastern Washington. The I10 is awesome too, coming through all that bug country from Atlanta through Louisiana, and then the incredible 18 hours of spaciousness from San Antonio to San Diego. I40 I always think of nearly dying in an ice storm in the panhandle of Texas. I70, the great mesas and cathedral rocks of Southern Utah. It ticks me off when people take these empty spaces for granted, disrespecting them. The only thing that makes me feel better is knowing that nature always gets the last laugh.
Anyway, I remember lying in the back of the van and thinking about the beauty passing by and trying a little trick where I wrote down words I saw as we sped along to see if I could concoct lyrics from them. Lovelock, Ruby Hills, Battle Mountain, High Desert, Mile 58. I have loved the words Alluvial Fan since I was a child, driving out to the desert where my folks owned a boat on the Colorado River at Lake Havasu. I loved the landscapes back then and loved that I had a name for those amazing mountainous formations that seemed to slide into the earth. I remembered it as Alluvian Fan at some point, putting an N at the end, so when I wrote the song, I left it like that. Poetic license.
Out of the words I saw flipping by came an idea of a couple fighting on a long drive. I have a vague memory of some sort of disagreement in the van that day, or someone being grumpy, something like that, but I could remember that wrong. Maybe that energy propelled the idea, or maybe it was some desolate look of a hotel or little house in the middle of nothing.
Later, as the words developed, I realized I was writing about a time in my life in which I had been battling mental health stuff, that desolate and fractious feeling within of not being able to change things. I tapped into that very desperate feeling of wanting things to be different and feeling trapped in a kind of unbearable cycle as I solidified the lyrics.
The desert is evocative of those kinds of feelings. From those I’ve met, people who choose the desert, maybe not necessarily the landscaped tracts of Phoenix, but those folks who seek out the solitude and small communities of outsiders way out in the desert have always seemed to me people who might be familiar to diving in to such mindsets, or folks who have given over to them.
Lake Havasu on the Colorado River near Parker Dam was quite different when I was young, before Spring Break came along and it became a destination. It always had a kind of rough edge to it, or at least that is my impression looking back. My parents bought the boat when I was about 7 years old. We camped for the first couple of years we went out there, but one time it reached 130 degrees, and from then on, we rented a house to stay in, and then a hotel on the water.
One of my favorite memories from that time was my father wiggling my foot early in the morning and me rising silently and heading to the boat with him. I sat in the front of the little speedboat, and we would cut across the glassy water, so glassy it was like we moved through cellophane. There was no one else on the lake, and my dad would find what seemed like the center of the lake and he would cut the engine. I can still hear the lapping of the water on the side of the boat as we settled and got still. Me and my dad didn’t speak the whole time. He’d be behind me in the captain’s chair, and he might have opened a beer for a little hair of the dog. Then we’d just watch the bluffs along the shore as they lit up with sunrise. We faced west as I remember it, watching the colors of the stone light up and change color as the sun rose behind us. There was so little development then, and no sound but the desert and the lake.
The prevailing feeling in my memory is of expectation, like the world was waiting for me, for my life to unfold. I had a sense of the rocks speaking to me in a way, the colors like a song sung. I was enveloped in the comfort of being cared for and safe, while at the same time always wanting to do the right thing, a kind of edge that always came over me when I was with my dad. I always wanted my father to be happy with me, so there was a hyper-awareness of mirroring his mood. I knew I got to go on these morning rides because I was able to wake instantly, with no fuss, and express no need. I also understood that in the morning, he dictated when conversation would happen. He was quiet and internal for a long time in the mornings. I think I might have picked up that need for silence first thing too.
The river smelled like river. Last time I was there was quite a while ago, but even then, the river had started to smell like boats. It had gotten popular, and the development and changes were like what happens everywhere.
I was speaking to Gretchen this morning and we were speaking about the world, and change. It is a process to be okay with change, and I’m always working on it. I grew up in a place that was only orange groves when I was born, and now it’s paved over so far into the natural places I loved that I don’t know where I am anymore when I’m driving there. I remember times when I was in pain visiting, fighting the desire within myself for things to stay the same and being so upset that they kept changing. There is no use in that. Once we recognize that change is the fabric of our reality, our outlook becomes a bit more peaceful. A lot of my healing from the difficult times in my life was to recognize that change is not only possible, but fundamental. I could dive into it, and in a lot of ways, that healed me.
The missing sucks. I guess I could get wrapped up in all I miss that is no longer present here and thus make my life miserable again, but it’s better for me when I let the frustration with unpleasant change come out in little bursts of anger and let it pass. This is where hope comes in, and the cultivation of a belief that light always wins out, that even if the changes I see are not for the good, that somehow the change will bring us ultimately to where we’re supposed to be. If everything looks so bleak now, how long until the curve in the road that brings us into the light again? I have to believe that will always come.
How many yellow lines have I become hypnotized by, how many landscapes have entered my reality and flew out of it? I have a feeling that when I leave my body the journey might feel like this, all these memories and worries and stresses and loves flying by my vision like images through a backseat window. When the Buddha achieved enlightenment, he saw himself running from birth to death in life after life after life. This is comforting to me, or I should say, the stopping of the running is a comforting thought, that stillness there. I guess I was born to live in expectation, like listening to the light on the hills. I’ll just trust the river to carry me along.
