Category Archives: Case Studies

Live Show Review of Release at Coney Island Baby

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Radiator King

By

Mark Ashe

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Performing live at Coney Island Baby on February 22 2019

Review by Jacqueline Hernandez & Photos by Mark Ashe

A full gallery of photos by Mark Ashe is located here.

Roll the Dice

The music scene is alive and well in the Lower East Side of New York City. On any given night you can roll the dice, hedge your bets, walk into a bar and find new music to fall in love with.

On February 22, I found myself in one such bar for the Radiator King Roll the Dice EP release show. On this night the sound of fresh music and raw passion wafted down Avenue A.

Coney Island Baby is a beautifully decorated venue with the best seats in the house, anywhere in the house. The slightly elevated stage, and lounge seating allows for an intimate show which is complimentary to a wide range of performances. This night the house was packed from the bar to the stage with fans anxiously awaiting the live performance.

At around 9:30 PM Radiator King took the stage; the excitement and the pride was palpable.There is something so electric about watching people live out their dreams, creating art and being so invested in sharing that with others.

During this performance Radiator King was comprised of Adam Silvestri on lead vocals/ guitar, Ed Goldson bassist/ backing vocals, Adam Moses percussion, and Shaul Eshet on keyboard/backing vocals . Each one of these musicians not only came with an impressive skill set, but a clear dedication to the art they are creating, and the clear evidence of joy on their faces.

The unit played an hour long set comprised of 13 songs woven together from the earlier albums of ‘Document Untold’, ‘A Hollow Triumph‘, and the new project ‘Roll the Dice’. The set listcontains songs that are weighty in storytelling, but take on a different life when they are played live.

Silvestri’s writing has been likened to the Boss and other Americana greats, but to see them play, it is evident that Radiator King is in a league of their own. The sound is unique, yet nostalgic. The haunting vocals and the impressive artistry by the musicians creates a sound that envelops the space and draws the listener into the stories being told.

All around the room, there are smiles on faces, feet tapping and many fans mouthing along to the songs being played. The energy coming from the stage is infectious. It is clear that everyone involved is having a great time. New and old fans alike are being drawn together by the electricity in the room.

Video by Jacqui H

Songs like my personal favorite “Raylene” wafting from the stage depict a vulnerability and honesty in the songwriting. While others such as ‘Ghost Dance’ , “Christmas Eve’, “The Guns you Pawned’ and “So Long Charlie” transport you back to a different time in history. “Second thoughts in Memphis’ and ‘Roll the Dice’ engulf you in nostalgia and have you aching for lovers long gone. The music has a way of tugging at your heartstrings.

To see Radiator King play live is so much more than a concert, and it is something you should definitely experience for yourself.

Set list:

Freddy Rockin

Ghost Dance

Christmas Eve

Raylene

Second Thoughts in Memphis

The Guns You Pawned

Someday

Roll the Dice

Murray’s Hurried Blues

So Long (Charlie)

Salesman

Crusade

Too Mean to Die

Spring Tour Dates

3/15 Metropolis Collective – Mechanicsburg, PA

3/16 The Purple Fiddle – Thomas, WV

3/17 West Side Bowl – Youngstown, OH

3/28 Sing Sing Kill Brewery – Ossining, NY*

3/29 A Better Place Bar & Grill – Central Valley, NY*

4/4 On the Verge  – Somerset, NJ*

4/6 The Watering Hole – Hamilton Township, NJ

4/7 Danny Clinch Transparent Gallery – Asbury Park, NJ

4/10 Tommy’s Pub –  Charlotte, NC

4/11 The World Famous – Athens, GA

4/12 Drunken Unicorn – Atlanta, GA

4/13 Nashville, TN

4/14 The Nick – Birmingham, AL

4/15 Private – Huntsville, AL

4/16 Memphis, TN

4/19 The Dream Away Lodge – Webster, MA*

5/13 Wonder Bar – Asbury Park, NJ

5/23 Private – Antrim, NH *

5/24  Apohadion Theatre – Portland, ME*

5/25 Lompoc Cafe – Bar Harbor, ME*

5/26 Uncharted – Lowell, MA*

*Solo

Video by Jacqui H

A full gallery of photos by Mark Ashe is located here.

To submit a story or to just say hello, email us at lmnandr@gmail.com

Check out the Live Music News and Review.com Facebook page for updates and announcements.

Atwood Magazine Premieres “Raylene”

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 http://atwoodmagazine.com/raylene-radiator-king-song/

PREMIERE: RADIATOR KING INVOKE SPRINGSTEEN’S SADNESS ON “RAYLENE”

Radiator King © Indofunk Satish
Radiator King’s “Raylene” is Americana Punk that taps into the overwhelming sadness that nostalgia brings.
Stream: “Raylene” – Radiator King

Armed with a sense of nostalgia, Radiator King’s latest song “Raylene” is a hard rocking ballad that channels the Americana sensations of Bruce Springsteen in a straightforward manner. Like so many great songs, “Raylene” (from Roll the Dice, out 2/15 via SoundEvolution Records) is about trying to win someone’s heart by writing a song, but on a macro-level it’s about how music really brings us all together. The Brooklyn band takes the open-wound rawness of punk rock and draws it into this dirty, simple rocker.

Roll the Dice by Radiator King

Roll the Dice – Radiator King

Raylene, my heart is burning
I hope you hear me singing
to you through this song
I walked back, back to where I started
I swear I’ll make it all up to you someday

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering Radiator King’s “Raylene.” What resonates most about “Raylene” is that it has this no-bullshit sense about it. Perhaps due to frontman Adam Silvestri’s Boston roots, Radiator King sound like they could be playing in a DIY basement show or on the jukebox of an Irish bar. “Raylene” rocks hard with a sadness. When the chorus hits, the band has this crunchy, swelling distortion that sounds like Black Sabbath and Cheap Trick are backing Springsteen. Even in the song’s softer moments, there’s a relatively quick pacing, so it doesn’t really lose the bob that the simple guitar melody forces you to nod along to.

I watch the clouds roll on through the foothills
Until at last they make their way out of sight
Lets say goodbye in the last days of summer
Knowing we got every bang for our buck

“Lyrically ‘Raylene’ is one of the more personal songs I’ve written,” Silvestri tells Atwood Magazine. “Normally I try to write from others perspectives, trying to put myself in their shoes but that was really not the case here. The emotion I sought to convey was very much a result of my own experiences at the time of writing. Writing and releasing personal, heartfelt songs can be difficult because they leave you vulnerable. But I think it’s that vulnerability that can allow for the most honest and impactful songs.”

He continues, “When I first wrote ‘Raylene’ I envisioned it as a soft, subtle ballad played on an acoustic guitar with some light percussion — Very minimalist and subdued. However, when I brought the song to the band, that approach just seemed too predictable. After running through it a few times, we decided to start experimenting with a bigger sound. If I remember correctly it was really the producer, Shaul Eshet, who suggested we take it in more of a rock and roll direction. So we just went for it and everything started to fall into place.”

Radiator King

Radiator King

Silvestri’s delivery is filled with a timeless yearning that’s much older than he is. There’s a pain in his voice, as he sings to the titular Raylene, that’s often reserved for the likes of Jason Isbell. The Boston-sensibility really shines through. There’s a sense of longing that comes with places like Boston or New Jersey that’s familiar and as comforting as it is melancholy. It sounds like the type of song where your uncle’s just snuck you your first beer and is telling you about the music he grew up on. In the lines, “Raylene, my heart is burning, I hope you hear me singing to you through this song,” you’re left convinced that Raylene will never hear this song, as you replace the name with Tommy or Gina. It’s most moving when Silvestri turns the questions on himself and sings lines like, “I’m worried I forgot how to walk with another, ’cause you know I’ve walked so far now on my own.”

The wind calls me now so I must be going
There were so many things I could never say
I’m worried I forgot how to walk with another
Cause you know I’ve walked so far now on my own
Raylene, Raylene, Raylene
Baby the ends upon us
Oh and here comes the storm
I still cherish all the days I spent with you

Most of all, “Raylene” serves a reminder that we’re not perfect: “I walked back, back to where I started. I swear, I’ll make it all up to you someday.” It’s an ideal song for walking the streets in these brutal last few weeks of winter. Radiator King serve to help us reckon with our emotions and wrongdoings, and in spite of wishful thinking, sometimes it is best to just say goodbye.

Stream “Raylene” exclusively on Atwood Magazine! Radiator King’s Roll the Dice is out Friday, February 15, 2019.

:: stream/purchase Roll the Dice here ::
Stream: “Raylene” – Radiator King

Glide Magazine Premieres Single “Roll the Dice”

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Glide Magazine have premiered my newest single “Roll the Dice” off the upcoming EP! They write”Silvestri displays a knack for crafting vivid lyrical tales and turning them into rock and roll that connects on a human level. Ultimately he proves himself to be the straightforward, no bullshit songwriter on par with acts like The Gaslight Anthem, Jason Isbell, and American Aquarium. “

Read the article HERE!

King of the Road #6: When the Dust Settles

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There’s an old proverb that says “all is fair in love and war”. Now I never stepped on a battlefield during wartime, fired a gun at another or been shot at so I cannot speak to the latter, but the former I have known as truth. Blinded by the glare of love, I have done things in my life that have defied any sort of logic and derailed me from the intended course I’d been following. Not for one minute have I ever regretted any of it. One such case was my first West Coast tour.

A year prior to embarking on said tour, I had met a beautiful girl at my best friend’s wedding. Her name was Cindy and we hit it off right away. At the time she was enrolled in a graduate program at the University of California, San Francisco. We talked for most of the night and when the wedding was over we promised to keep in touch. So off we went, back to our respected sides of the country, her in the West and me in the East.

In the months that followed Cindy and I’s friendship grew. Thoughts of her vacated my mind frequently. We spoke often and in a conversation one night I mentioned that I had really wanted to tour the West Coast. Being the caring and clever person that she was, Cindy proposed a plan where I would fly over during her spring break and she would drive me up the coast, stopping at shows along the way. Overcome with excitement, I feverishly booked myself a week long stretch of shows ending in Washington State.

A few months later I arrived out west with my guitar and a duffle bag nervously awaiting the journey that lay ahead. Cindy met me at the airport with her tiny two-seater Mazda Miata convertible and thus our trek north began. Because the trunk was too small to house my guitar, we were forced to strap it on top of the trunk with bungee cords. Amazingly it survived the entire trip.

As we traveled along State Route 1 up the Pacific coastline, I was in awe of the alien landscape. The winding road curled along the cliffs while the waters of the great Pacific crashed on the shoreline below. The weather was nearly perfect. Hardly ever was there a cloud in the sky to block the sun that beamed on the faces of the two wide-eyed travelers whose hearts were beating out of their chest. For that week we lived in our own little fantasy world. At night we would find little dingy roadside motels to stay in and cheap food to eat. Oh, how I wanted to freeze time and relive those days over and over again for eternity.

We passed through places I had only read about in books. As we approached Monterey we entered the Salinas Valley where Steinbeck had written the greatest novels of our country and told the American story with more guts and truth than anyone ever had. Periodically the highway would jet inland and we’d pass through barren fields once worked by migrant farmers, now seared from recent wildfires. If you looked closely you could see the budding plant life, rearing its head through the ash to begin the cycle over again. Further north the colossal trees of the Redwood Forest towered over us like gentle giants granting passage to what lay ahead. And then there was the sheer beauty of the Oregon Coast where massive stumps of trees cut down lifetimes ago now protruded from the water like mighty serpents petrified in mid breech.

One of the greatest gifts of tour is seeing old friends who had moved to different parts of the country. Such was the case in Takoma, Washington where I got to hang with my childhood friend, Pat. He had moved out west a few years earlier and when he heard I was playing nearby, made the two hour trip with a few friends. Growing up, Pat was like a brother to me. We played in our first band together, discovered punk rock together, sipped our first beer together and were more or less inseparable during our most formidable years. There in Takoma, Pat and I sat at a table by a window at the venue catching up and talking about old times. What a special treat it was to see my good friend. Unfortunately, that would be the last time I would ever see him alive.

I’ve relived that last visit with Pat in my head many times since his passing; the nuances of his speech, his signature chugging laugh, the way his face lit up when he smiled. A few months before his passing he’d invited me to come to New Hampshire where he was living at the time. I told him I’d have to take a raincheck as I was recording an album and really couldn’t get away. The last thing he asked me was for some new band recommendations to listen to, something we’ve shared with each other for most our lives. What I wouldn’t give to drop everything there and then and go visit my old friend, play records and talk about life one last time. Together we’d broken down in cars on the side of highways, got our asses kicked by men much bigger than us, moshed to some amazing bands at VFW halls and learned about sucking the marrow out of life. Great friends are hard to come by and Pat was one of the best.

When we had reached our furthest point north, Cindy and I drove back to her campus in San Francisco. Though she still had nearly two years left in her program, we fell madly in love and were inseparable for a good stretch of time to follow. Whenever Cindy had breaks from school she would hop on a plane and come meet me on tour and we would enter back into our fantasy world, like two fugitives on the run, totally disconnected from the outside world. But like so often is the case, life took Cindy and I in two different directions and the relationship eventually ended.

Memories are a strange thing. We’d like to think that when the dust settles and the significant events and people in our lives are no longer available to us, we are rest assured that the memories will be there for us to hold always. However, not even memories can combat the deterioration of time. Memories are a shared experience, and when the people that we shared them with are no longer around then the memories begin to chip away. When the ones we shared them with are no longer living in this world then a valuable part of the memory dies. The greatest gifts in life are not for owning. As much as we want to grab them and keep them for ourselves, they can never be ours. All we can do is be thankful that the gods have blessed us with the opportunity to experience them for the time that we did. Be thankful that in all of the chaos of atoms whirling around the universe, somehow, someway, these people were brought into our lives. I’m not a very mystical person but I like to think that their introduction into our lives is not merely a random event in a chaotic universe. I believe that these people are bestowed upon us in order to usher us along to the next part of our journey. They are our trusty travel companions and shape our soul until at last we are ready and must move on to the next chapter of life. And perhaps in another lifetime we will be visited once again by our travel companions and although their faces and names will be unknown, our souls will remember and we shall feel a divine connection. The more time I spend on this earth the more I am approaching an understanding of love; an understanding I am quite certain I will never entirely grasp.

https://www.blackisthenewapstyle.com/2019/01/when-dust-settles.html?fbclid=IwAR0RPHzYZE4m7h1ymcL7g2x5aEo_M9mS_do-Bm-WAg8BJKQ8JczxGVwVlVw

King of the Road #5: Human Stupidity

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King of the Road #5: Human Stupidity

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

–Albert Einstein

It wasn’t more than two weeks ago that my band and I were to journey to a small town in upstate New York to record a music video. The ride was to take nearly four hours and after picking up the last member in Harlem at 7 a.m., I drove us north along the Palisades Parkway in hopes to arrive at the location by 11 a.m. where the film crew was waiting. About two hours out, due to full bladders and an empty tank, I pulled off the highway at a rest stop. After tending to our duties, we were back on the road; singing along to songs on the radio without a care in the world.

At some point along the ride we crossed a bridge and a voice from the back seat yelled, “I can see the city, shouldn’t we be much further away from it?” Annoyed at having to take a break from singing a chorus of “The Sweater Song”, I replied with something along the lines of, “Nah, the city is huge. Sit back and relax and let the GPS do its thing.” Well, before long we saw a sign saying “Welcome to the Bronx” and it was clear at this point something terribly wrong had occurred.

As it turns out, while at the rest stop I had somehow reversed our direction so that the GPS was navigating us back to Harlem. The only way I can think that this occurred is that I must have hit a button while checking a text message, thus changing the destination. The kicker is that I didn’t recognize we were traveling in the wrong direction until we reached the Bronx. Frustrated beyond belief, I hit the steering wheel and yelled, “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done!” Then a voice inside my head reminded me that this was not the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, in fact it was from it. There and then the inspiration for this month’s post occurred. My friends – I swallow my pride and present to you, idiotic encounters of the road.

Stupid Act #1: God Only Knows, SC

I was on a solo tour of the South and following a show one night I found myself in the living room of a couple who were gracious enough to let me crash on their couch. Like so often the case when crashing at someone’s place, we stayed up late and got drunk. Sometime during the course of our conversation it had come up that some nights when I have no couch to crash on, I sleep in the back of my van. Mortified at this notion, the kind hearted couple pleaded that I get protection! And no, they weren’t talking about contraception. For they felt that sleeping in the van alone without some sort of weapon was very dangerous. Of course, my drunk mind thought, I need a weapon! If a robber were to break into the van at night while I slept how was I to protect myself? With a pellet gun of course! Sound line of reasoning right? Let me just be clear and say this was many years ago, when I was a little less bright.

So the following day I drove to a sporting goods store and bought myself a nice new matte black Colt pellet gun that looked nearly identical to a real firearm. I loaded my gat with the CO2 cartridge and placed it snug in my glove compartment where it would patiently wait until its day of duty. While buying the pellet gun for protection was incredibly stupid in its own right, it is actually not the stupid act I am referring to here in this entry. No, it gets more idiotic.

Fast forward one week. Before a show in Orlando, FL I stopped at the airport to pick up my dear friend Eric, who was to join me for the remainder of the tour playing his own music solo. (He’s got a great band called Fax Holiday, check them out!) We worked our way North playing shows every night. After about a week or so, we had a night off somewhere in South Carolina. Most of the day we spent on a gorgeous beach and as the sun set over the blue waters, we decided to find a Walmart parking lot in which to sleep at for the night (If you recall from a previous post, Walmart is the only place I know of that allows you to park and sleep in your vehicle overnight). Although it was a tight squeeze, Eric and I slept in the back bunk together for most of this tour; a feat you can only endure with your closest and least obnoxious friends.

After finishing off a box of cheap wine we had conveniently bought at Walmart, Eric and I got the grand idea to perform target practice using the pellet gun that had yet to be fired. After flipping a shopping cart on its side, we got some empty beer bottles out of a trash can, lined them up on top of the cart and walked 15 or so paces back. There, under the flicker of the fluorescent street lights, in the middle of a Walmart parking lot somewhere South of North Carolina, we shot at empty beer bottles like two drunken outlaws from a Sergio Leone film while twilight shoppers wheeled their carts to and from the Walmart entrance.

Stupid Act #2: Lincoln, NE

It was during a cross country solo tour the first time I played Lincoln, NE. The show was at a really cool bar called Bodega’s Alley where the legendary blues Harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite got his start. I met many wonderful people that night; the other bands on the bill were great and the overall scene was very welcoming to a stranger like myself. One of the artists who played that night had an ambulance that she had converted into an awesome tour vehicle and after the show about five or six of us sat in the back drinking beer and hanging out. The following morning I was to play a Daytrotter session, a music studio that records bands and then streams the live performances for their listeners, then would continue on to play a show in Chicago later that night.

In preparation for tour, I always have a notebook where I list the itinerary along with the approximate drive time between each city as a means to make sure I allot myself enough time to get from show to show. The address I had written down for Daytrotter required a short one hour drive from where I currently was. My plan was to spend the night in Lincoln, wake up at 9 a.m. and get there in plenty of time for my session at 11 a.m. Easy business. No problem.

While in the back of the ambulance having a great time with my new friends, I got a phone call from the engineer at Daytrotter confirming I’d be ready to rock in the morning. I assured him I’d be ready to go and that I would arrive there 30 minutes prior to my performance. He said that was great and someone would be waiting for me at their studio and then referred to the address. I scratched my head and read to him the address I had written down. With a chuckle he replied, “No, I’m not sure where that is, but I can assure you that’s not where our studio is located.” “Right. See you in the morning!” I replied. After hanging up I quickly checked my GPS to see how long the drive time was to the actual location. My stomach sank. Seven hours!!!! In a frantic rush I said goodbye to my new friends, jumped out of the ambulance, got in my van and drove off. Ok, I thought, It’s now 3 a.m., if I drive straight through the night I will get there on time. So that’s what I did, only stopping for fuel and coffee. I arrived at the Daytrotter studios with 15 minutes to spare. My hands shook as the caffeine battled with the exhaustion in both my head and in my gut. I poured some whiskey into my coffee cup while giving myself a pep talk. You can sleep later, right now you must suck it up, carry yourself up those steps and play your ass off! I sat in the studio chair, drank down the whiskey and played my set exhausted, hung over, buzzed and a bit delirious. (If you feel so inclined, go check the performance out on their site and see if you can tell.) Following the session, I said my goodbyes and found myself a rest stop off the highway, crawled in the back to my bunk and was fast asleep in minutes.

I wish I could say that the list of stupid acts I have committed on tour only consist of the ones I have told here, but sadly this is not true. These are simply the first ones that come to mind. In reality there are many more. Hell, probably enough to fill a whole book and perhaps someday I shall write that book. But for now I’ll look back and laugh at all the screw ups, mistakes and bad choices I’ve made out there on the road and be grateful that I remain intact enough, both in body and in mind, to tell it.

King of the Road #4: A Long Way From Home

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King of the Road #4: A Long Way From Home

https://www.blackisthenewapstyle.com/2018/10/a-long-way-from-home.html?fbclid=IwAR2aDaQznX7vVAeKsdLvkO__DSVmYi6JKrVH8sjt6ZPd0CDwy0k3Qs8Kvc4

It’s 3 a.m. in a small Savannah bungalow; there are seven still bodies scattered about, sleeping on the floor around you. The crew consists of your bandmates and Boston band Pile, a group which you’ve been close friends with for the past 10 years. For 14 shows down the East Coast you’ve been opening for them and it’s been one of the most incredible touring experiences to date. In the morning you will say farewell to them all; your bandmates will board a plane back to New York and Pile will head North while you continue on West. It will mark the beginning of a long journey, a pilgrimage that will take you across this sprawling country all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back around again to your home in New York City. The tour will take a little over a month to complete and you will do it all alone. In that time you will sit on the rim of the Grand Canyon, body surf on massive waves in the Pacific Ocean, grapple with inner demons on long drives, go longer than you ever had before without showering, travel the furthest from home you’ve ever been, and write some the best songs you’ve ever written. You’ll learn more about this country than you ever could in a book or a college course. But most of all you will learn about yourself and what kind of fabric you’re cut from.

You act tough on the first day. A defense mechanism to mask the fact that you are scared shitless to be there without your bandmates. As you run through your set on stage at an Alabama dive there’s a timidness about you, a lack of confidence in your song. You begin to doubt your abilities and whether or not the people in the audience enjoy your music. It’s quite simple, without confidence you cannot perform well no mattered how talented or skilled you may be.

That night you spread out your sleeping bag on the futon mattress that sits atop a wooden bunk which fits snugly in the back of the van. The van is lit by a Coleman camping lantern, the same lantern you once used when camping with your grandparents so long ago in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Sipping on whiskey to calm the nerves, you question your ability to handle the long quest that lies ahead. You think back to a drunken late night conversation a few nights prior with a tour mate, where he pats you on the back and says, “I got to hand it to you buddy, you got more guts than I touring out there all on your own.” Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew. Are you crazy thinking you could keep it together for a month on the road all by yourself?

As you travel west, playing show after show you begin to sink into a rhythm. Shows begin to feel natural playing up there alone and the confidence you exhibited with a full band begins to enter into your solo performances. You begin to converse and tell stories from stage and slowly build the spirit necessary to perform proper on your own. In each city you meet new friends and the anxiety of being alone begins to wash away.

On a desolate highway somewhere between Oklahoma and New Mexico you drive. The street is lit by the massive feed manufacturing plants that dominate the land every few miles. It’s 3 a.m. and the only other vehicles on the road are tractor-trailer trucks bombing down the wide open interstate, abiding to their nocturnal schedule as not to be slowed by the amateur daytime drivers. As you catch a glimpse of the night sky you realize that you have never seen the stars shine so bright. It’s the farthest you’ve ever been from home and you’re there all alone. A voice comes over you and says, “Yes! This is what you are chasing, seize it!” Your arms steer the wheel so that the van slows to the shoulder of the road. You get out and lay on the cool gravel of an embankment by the roadside and look up at the blazing speckled sky. The ground rumbles from the colossal trucks barreling by. The beauty of the moment is overwhelming and you hope that somehow, someway, you can hold onto the memory forever. As you look over the vast, alien landscape you wonder, “How did I end up here?” and begin to laugh a maniacal laugh when you consider the absurdity of it all. It starts with a crazy idea, a fantasy, a childhood dream that you can’t quite shake and it pushes you off into a desolate divide, expanse and unforgiving that changes the very ground upon which you walk.

All hail the sacred radio! Without it the lonesome traveler would surely go mad. Western states are massive, much larger than those of the east and often require long drives from show to show, sometimes 10 hours a day. You spin the wheel on your old trusty Apple iPod. Atop the snowy mountains of Oregon the hypnotic gallop of the Velvet Underground keeps you chugging. Across the great plains of West Texas Skip James’ eerie wail fills your soul with inspiration. Through the deserts of Arizona the raw power of the Stooges keeps you from nodding off. On a breathtaking stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, windows down, the distorted overtones of Social Distortion fuse with the sound of the outside wind passing by. You play a game to keep your mind occupied, where upon entering a new city or state you put on a band that has any sort of significance or relation to that place. In Duluth, you play Dylan. Chicago, you put on Howlin’ Wolf. In Nebraska you play Springsteen… and so on and so forth.

At some point halfway through the tour, you begin to take notice that strangers treat you differently when you are touring alone than when touring with a band. People are more generous, more willing to take you in and accept you amongst their clan. At a show in Houston, TX a woman and her husband befriend you and insist upon getting you a hotel room for the night where you can get a much needed shower because as the kind hearted woman points out, “Someone who plays such nice music shouldn’t smell so bad”. At a Santa Fe Brewery the manager of the venue takes you back to his home where him and his lady make you dinner at 2 a.m. and give you a gift in the morning, a book called Navaho Expedition that they thought you’d like based off a conversation the night prior. In Flagstaff a college professor sits at a bar with you after your set and expresses his appreciation for your music and as the conversation ends, hands you a key to his cottage which he insists you stay at for the night. Throughout this great country the cultures, dialect and terrain differ greatly, but the quality of kindness is very much the same.

On a warm summer day in June you arrive back home. You park the van on your block like you had so many times before, and as you walk the steps to your home you notice that something has changed. It’s not in the way the apartment building looks or smells or feels. No, for the change was not one that occurred in the external material world. It occurred deep down within. Over the next few weeks you would be filled with a great frustration due to your inability to communicate all you had experienced on your journey. You’d go on similar solo tours multiple times in the coming years but none would ever match the impact and importance of that first one. Out there on your own you had learned of the true nature of fear. You had watched it go head to head in the ring against guts and courage and over and over again you watched as fear was toppled.