One day shortly after my Patagonia trip, I was sitting in my office in Quito (Ecuador) listening to Tom Waits. I heard his song “Whistle Down the Wind”, and I had to listen to it again. I don’t know how many times I listened to it over the next few days. My mind was full of images of late-summer evenings in small farming towns of the American Midwest, of the melancholy of departure and the restlessness of being tied geographically to any area. I imagined, there and then, a full album dedicated to this longing, and music that would carry the hypnosis of natural scenery and the adventure of travel.

I found a lyric that I had scribbled into my notebook the year before, when I was heading southward to Italy through the Bavarian Alps. I tried to find music that would convey this feeling, and found a fairly simple, folksy approach could make it work. My debt to Mr. Waits is obvious, though I don’t think that it robs my song of its own identity.

<- back