travelocities+music

Wow! The blog's been hoppin' in my absence the last few days.

At the moment, it's midnight-ish and I am sitting on my brother Robert's couch in Bell Buckle, TN. In the past 48 hours I have driven from Knoxville to Nashville when someone in my family had to go in the hospital there. Then I drove from Nashville to Bell Buckle, only I somehow got lost trying to take backroads and the trip took 2 hours (instead of 50 minutes). My little brother, who was with me, became more than a little irritated with me and finally made me get in the passenger seat. In fact, he became so annoyed that he had a nosebleed. Really! I actually caused him to have a nosebleed without laying a hand on him.

Ha.

(This is a photo of Robert giving me the look he was giving me when he realized we were hopelessly lost on a route we've driven literally thousands of times in our lives. Unhappy boy ;-)



Then I drove that same day from Bell Buckle to Atlanta, spent the night in Atlanta -- but didn't get much sleep -- and then today, I was headed from Atlanta to Knoxville when my hospitalized family member took a turn for the worse and I had to basically turn around and drive all the way back to Nashville. And once ICU visiting hours were over, I had to drive to Bell Buckle from Nashville to spend the night because despite the fact that I have many friends in Nashville, none of them seemed to be in town tonight.

I think I must have driven, like 1000 miles in 48 hours. Exhausting.

And along the way, somewhere in the southeastern U.S., I somehow managed to lose my passport, which I had grabbed at my mom's house as I ran thru Bell Buckle the first time Friday morning. So now I may have my identity stolen (which might be okay, I guess, if I can get some supercool new identity.)

So... I am very, very tired, but that kind of tired where you aren't really able to sleep.

The only good thing about all that driving is that I've had lots of time to listen to some new music (new to me, anyway). Have you heard the single "Disco Ball" from Saucy Monkey? If not, you should.

And I can also recommend this band Aqualung (no, not a Jethro Tull tribute band.) Very good stuff also.

And tonight I've been listening to this band Fisher. I love half the stuff on the CD and detest the other half. Some of it is extremely cheesy, but there are a few really catchy, infectious, sing along in the car pop songs on it that I like, plus you don't often hear pop songs that are written about motherhood, but Fisher's are.

Last but not least, the new John Davis CD is very solid jangly guitar pop.
( JD, formerly of my college pal Sam Powers' band Superdrag) One thing that surprised me, though, is that the CD is almost 100% about Jesus. Seriously. That's what most of the lyrics are about. One of the songs is a straight-up, old-time gospel number. No irony either; it's a record about being a Christian. Quite a departure from Superdrag. It sort of sounds like if Brian Wilson and Marshall Crenshaw became born again and made a record about it together.

Oh yeah, and if you want some fab new music to mope around with, just go ahead and toss that dated Belle And Sebastian CD you've been dragging around since 1999 and replace it with The Decemberists' new one, "Picaresque."

OK, off to bed. Or couch. Or floor. Or something...