Today is the "busiest" travel day of the year in the United States. It leads up to Thanksgiving on Thursday, which I think is probably the best "holiday" in the sense that spending time breaking bread with family and friends and catching up is a really good idea. Anyway, I thought it would be appropriate to share a new song I've been working on called "Travel with me".
This song has a notable genesis: Walt Whitman. I was exploring some of his work and I read "Song of the Open Road" from Leaves of Grass (read it here: http://www.bartleby.com/142/82.html). Something about this poem really moved me, so I started writing a song about it. That didn't get very far as I ended up merging my own themes from what I took to be so powerful from Whitman's work. He exalts so many things about being on the "open road" but in the end it becomes meaningless without company; he has a phrase near the end, "travel with me" that I decided to center on in my song. The themes which come out in my lyric doesn't relay the depth and beauty of Whitman's work, but as a point of inspiration I am glad I used it as a starting point.
As with most of my demos, I didn't focus much getting a studio quality capture of my voice and guitar -- just a quick single take to make sure I have down for reference. I first performed this song to others at the Folk Alliance Region Midwest gathering down in St. Louis a few weeks ago, and then more recently I played it at Chillfest Chicago. Each time it has undergone some evolution and tweaking, and hopefully it will end up being on my new album project in early 2014.