Just to be clear, before I get into this, I don’t believe in magic, past lives, or any of that. I don’t even believe in modern day miracles, except through secondary means. So, what I’m about to talk about are simply feelings I don’t understand. There’s a very good chance that my brain manufactures them because I want to feel them, but after having talked to a lot of folks, I know we all pretty much do this.

Andalusia Farm, Home of Flannery O’Connor - July 2024

If I’m being honest, I’m having a hard time writing this because I don’t know how to describe it, but I’ll give you a few non-musical examples before I dig into the music. I have this picture I took at the Forum in Rome, and when I look at it, I remember exactly how I felt when I took it. I looked down on it and thought about how many people had walked those streets since the beginning of Rome. Emperors, slaves and all sorts in between. Or, when visiting Stirling, Bannockburn and other sites affiliated with William Wallace, my mind could almost see the battle play out. Some kind of combination of what I know of the actual history and the images burned in my brain from watching Braveheart fifty times. Or, more simply, the sadness that seemed to weigh me down like an anvil tied to my heart when I stood inside the slave market building in Charleston.

What we’re connecting to is the human experience. Call it empathy or sympathy or something like that, but it stretches through time. It doesn’t and can’t replace actual human relationships. Like saying you care about a war halfway around the world, you do care, on some very low level, but you don’t care as much as you probably think you do (and for some people, they care more about telling you they care, then they actually care). It’s momentary, but it’s memorable. And, it can be inspiring.

I’ll give you just a few artistic examples:

In 2003, my life-long friend Ryan was just starting his career in sound and was working at Track Record Studios in North Hollywood. He’d call me up and tell me the studio was open that night and I’d drive over there and we’d record most of the night for free. I was only ever in Studio B - and spent 99% of the time in the iso booth with my acoustic guitar - but knowing all the records I loved recorded in that building, and Studio B in particular, it was like I was jumping into some creative stream and if I just paddled hard enough, I could catch up with those artists. One day Ryan points out a black mark in what was otherwise beautiful wood trim, and says, “Stevie Nicks put that cigarette burn there. The owner was pissed!” What do you do with that?
In 2022, at Norman Petty Studios in Clovis, NM I had several of these moments. I walked into the control room with Kenneth Broad and he said, “sit in that chair, that’s the chair Buddy always sat in.” Even writing this, I’m getting emotional because of what Buddy’s music has always meant to me. It wasn’t anything special, just a 1950’s cheap office chair, but it might as well have been a DeLorean with a Flux Capacitor because it was like the room dimmed into sepia tones and I could smell the Winston smoke in the air (Buddy’s brand except when he was sick, he switched to Kools). Then, at the end, I sat down on the couch in the back room with Kenneth, his wife and daughter and Maryline (who had walked through the recording room with me). Kenneth pointed out a picture behind me of Buddy and the Crickets sitting on that couch, in that room, on the same end of the couch as me. I wasn’t bawling, but my eyes were far from dry and Kenneth said to me, “You know, about six months ago when Robert Plant was here, he got emotional sitting on that couch.” Yeah, no kidding. Buddy died twenty-one years before I was born, I would never be closer to him than I was in that moment.

As I prepare to return to some of the other places where I’ve had these experiences (Andalusia Farm, New Orleans, various places in Memphis), I know I will feel them again. My connection to these people through their art only grows and for whatever reason, whenever place connects us, time gets a little thinner. It doesn’t make any sense to the practical side of me, but the emotional part of me cherishes these moments. And I think it’s important to listen to both of these parts of me. I shouldn’t get carried away by emotions, but I shouldn’t try to mute them either. Everything in life is pretty much trying to keep the pendulum centered, not swinging too far to either side. However, I think it’s okay to let it swing momentarily sometimes, if you know why it’s swinging and know it has to swing back, enjoy that moment. Let it inspire you. Let it allow you to connect with people you’ll never meet or see things from a perspective you would have never otherwise seen. Just don’t swing willy nilly, swing with a purpose.

Not Magic, But Something Like It