Road Tripping 1991

I’m following Uncle Sam a bit here, as I feel like relating the music that reminds me of a year, rather than just music from said year. That said….

1991 was the year where I discovered and embraced the road trip.

And I blame my friend Menasheh for this. Thank you, Menasheh!

I graduated from high school in the summer of 1991. By that point, I had my own car (a 1991 Dodge Raider 2-door with the V6 engine) and wanted to spread my wings a little. So road trips outside of our Utah home had a certain allure.

The first of these trips was a ramble to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. The seed to this was laid shortly after I graduated, when Menasheh and I were helping our friend, Jeremiah, get his girlfriend, Susi, on a Greyhound bus headed for California. As we waited at the bus terminal, conversation turned to summer and music. James Taylor and the Indigo Girls entered into the mix, and somebody - I can’t remember who, other than it wasn’t me - mentioned Telluride and their festival, and how JT, the Indigos and Béla Fleck would be there. I think that I pondered this for about 20 seconds before saying “we should go.”

And Menasheh and I did go to the festival. The venue at Telluride is awe-inspiring: the town is at the end of a glacially-carved canyon, so the PA from the festival ends up filling the entire town with sound. I vividly remember hearing the music from the festival grounds as I rode my mountain bike up the trails of the ski area.

At this wonderful event, I first heard David Wilcox and became more familiar with the works of Indigo Girls and James Taylor. I remember Wilcox playing “Daddy’s Money,” as well as his sitting in with Amy Ray and Emily Sailers on “Kid Fears” - the first two songs in this set. I’ve been a fan of both artists ever since. Additionally, Béla Fleck was a popular guy at this festival: he had mainstage sets both with The Flecktones as well as the only-at-Telluride group, Strength In Numbers (a bluegrass supergroup, featuring Fleck, Sam Bush, Edgar Meyer, Jerry Douglas and Mark O’Connor).

On the drive back, Menasheh introduced me to Paul Simon’s “Hearts And Bones,” which is one of my favorites of the Simon canon - and one that I enjoy playing on guitar.

Our second road trip of 1991 was a spontaneous New Year’s Eve weekend trip to California. This trip took us through Reno, Nevada, past the shores of Lake Tahoe and into Yosemite National Park, before heading to Monterey and Santa Cruz, and then the San Francisco Bay area. It was only a 5 or 6-day journey, and we decided to go with only 2 or 3 days’ notice. It was raw road tripping, and a lot of fun.

Along the way, we listened to a lot of our favorite songs on the newly-installed tape deck in the Raider. I spun up a lot of songs by The Beatles, including the happy “I’ve Just Seen A Face,” while Menasheh introduced me to The Rolling Stones‘ superb Let It Bleed album, where “Gimme Shelter” gripped me from the first haunting notes to the very end.

On New Year’s Eve, we ended up listening to part of The Grateful Dead’s concert from Oakland Coliseum (it was simulcast on a local public radio station) while parked on Twin Peaks - we heard all of Béla Fleck and The Flecktones’ opening set, followed by a bit of The Dead’s jam-laden set - before heading into the Nob Hill area to spend the rest of the evening at an improv comedy club. It was a fun evening, and a fun trip.

On the return trip - my purchases from Amoeba and Rasputin’s in hand - we made excellent time, doing the entire return drive from Berkeley to Salt Lake City in one monster stretch. This included driving through an ice fog that enveloped central Nevada and getting my little, boxy car up to 125 mph on Interstate 80 (what can I say? I was young and naïve at the time).

Those road trips were great times, for sure. These songs take me right back.

Download: “Daddy’s Money” - David Wilcox (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: “Kid Fears” - Indigo Girls (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: “Blu-Bop” - Béla Fleck and The Flecktones (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: “Hearts And Bones” - Paul Simon (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: “I’ve Just Seen A Face” - The Beatles (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: “Gimme Shelter” - The Rolling Stones (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: “Casey Jones” - The Grateful Dead (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)