It was the best of times; it was the worst of times

Whoa, reflective-ness! What a perilous, occasionally narcissistic, but gosh-darn heartwarming exercise thinking back can be. I’ve been trying to rein myself in all day, but thoughts of the past few years continue to creep up, and in my continued job-less and friendless state of parsimony, I’ve little to do but sweep the kitchen floor, pluck at my guitar, and find innovative ways to combine peanut butter and bread. And so, creep up they do, these thoughts, and I am powerless to stop them.

Living in my hometown in Ohio, as a post-collegiate without crippling student-loan debt, I lived cheaply, and thus was afforded a great many benefits. I traveled widely, I toured frequently—often to far-flung places where we made little to no money—and I ate and drank as if at a kegger thrown by Dionysus. In my humble little hometown there still exists bars where one can buy a drink for, no joke, one dollar and twenty-five cents. Frequently, my only night of the week out on the town was Tuesday, when I would throw my guitar in the trunk and head downtown for the revelry, imbibing, and occasional music-making of an old-Irish-guys music session, where we’d gather in a half-circle of dilapidated chairs around the equally dilapidated upright piano, pound out the jigs and reels, and where I’d drink Guinness and whiskey (usually Jameson, as my preferred Powers was mysteriously absent from what was advertised as the only “Irish Pub” in town) for free, all night. It was a fool’s paradise, some might say, but I still found an abundance of misery.

But, oh, the travel. While music, girls, and drinking (coffee, tea, beer, whiskey—anything caffeinated or alcoholic) are things I take very, very seriously, traveling may be the only thing of which I would never, ever, tire. It’s become something of a feedback loop for me, building onto its ever-widening wavelength, spiraling outward uncontrollably like the slow rumble of thunder echoing across the open plain. These past two years I’ve been very lucky, in ways that only now, broke and overwhelmed by the necessity to ingratiate myself to a new community, I’ve begun to appreciate. There is a handy little application on Facebook called “Where I’ve been” which has the ability to inform you of your travel-related worth by tracking your “stats”; apparently, I’ve been to 13% of the world, and I don’t know if I should be pleased or dissatisfied. But in the past two years alone, in part because of the touring, which escalated nationally in scope for The Princes of Hollywood, and also because I was itching to get out of town on all my other spare moments, I managed to go. A lot. From Boston to Los Angeles, Key West to Seattle, I hit the airways and interstates of this expansive country and caught passing glimpses of it’s history, both past and in the making. At one point I brazenly drove the full expanse of highway 90, which starts near the Boston Harbor and ends just east of Puget Sound and downtown Seattle. I surfed in Hawai’i. I sipped coffee and pastries continental in San Francisco. I think I was in Mexico once. I hazily remember an alcohol-related swimming pool accident in Charleston, South Carolina, a whiskey-fueled, late night bluegrass session high in the mountains of West Virginia, and almost getting arrested for playing a mandolin in a Fredericksburg, Virginia Seven-Eleven at 4 in the morning. Let the record show, please, that I have no regrets, and plead innocent on all charges.

Now, let it also be noted: this is not a compendium of braggadocio, but a fond walk down memory lane, and I only share because it brought me joy, and I wish you the same. Currently, however, I’m recalling these things with a tad bit of sadness, since my lifestyle change, while necessary for the sake of science and the progress of humanity, has momentarily forced me to put my wanderlust away. I know I have work to be done here, and it feels good to be where I am right now, and, really, that’s all you can hope for. I’ve got job interviews to attend, auditions to schedule, and people to meet, but I will be back with more, music-specific updates from music city later this week. But first, I need to go buy a map of Tokyo and start dreaming.