No, we haven’t fallen off the globe, which turns out to be round rather than flat, meaning that you never get to an edge; or rather there are many edges, but none precipitous enough to present real calamity; the whole idea of a sphere, a circle in three dimensions, being that, when traveling, you just keep going, over one receding horizon to the next, and that is what we have done. You should try it.

We have just recently driven coast to coast on the 10, this time from California, our fifth trip, by conservative count, not counting the times forty-five years earlier when we were on the road with the band, Billy Dean Sam. Lots of desert, lots of buttes, sage, saguaro and Joshua Trees.  You should try it.  There’s nothing like it in the world until Houston, a kind of hell, and even after that there are stretches of extreme beauty in the wetlands of Louisiana and along the extraordinary Gulf coast, even stuck inside of Mobile.

We preceded alternative rock by a good many years, propelled by something none of us understood, a love for each other and a love for life and music we didn’t understand.  We played where they would let us, and if they didn’t let us we played by ourselves, sometimes all night, often all night.  It didn’t last long; it never does if you do it right, but what comes next is infused with what you did.  Everything is built on what came before.  Billy, the drummer, became an architect, or something like that, Dean, the one in the middle, the bass player, and one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever encountered, built houses and left us way too soon; me on the right, guitar and singer, still pitching rhymes. This is what that long, open road insists we remember.  Love, friendship and hope.