Tuesday, September 08, 2015

How it all Began


5 Years ago exactly to this day I began a great journey, hitchhiking from Toronto to Vancouver with only $20 in my pocket eventually teaching myself enough guitar that I could live from shows. Right now I would have been sleeping in Desbarats Ontario and by morning I would witness the birth of a cow and then head out onto the country road to get my next ride.

Within a few days I would be picked up by Jann Arden's brother, share meals with truck drivers, stay with an elderly Christian couple who grew 80% of their own food under Saskatchewan skies in rural fields and give advice to a crying American woman whose son had just come out and she didn't know what to do. In Vancouver I would continue down south sharing shows with my Swedish friend all the way from Portland down to Arizona, Texas, New Orleans and then all the way up to New York and Vermont via greyhound bus for about 6 weeks. This intense relationship would nearly kill me but I would find peace again alone on the road for another 6 weeks bussing West from New York to Portland, seeing old friends and making some new, watching the Autumn colours slip into winter, living off donations and food from gigs in cafes, staying with couch surfers, fighting a two week cold in Cleveland and dragging myself onto the bus again, making it to Portland $200 richer after my host in Boise Idaho pushed an envelope into my hand at the bus station saying, 'we have more than enough, use this to follow your dream'.

From November in Portland I stayed in a house with some art students for a few weeks and fell in love like a dumb teenager. We watched The Walking Dead, drank too much and they liked my burritos. I pretended I was brave when we said goodbye but the truth is, music was all that kept me going for a while. And I wonder, did he ever put those words into song?

So weird to look back on all of this again, like an alarm just went off in me for some kind of anniversary. Or a reminder to have more adventures. Or both.

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