Travel Tunes - Week 31

This week’s Travel Tune touches on a fantasy for some. We’ve talked about heading out on the open road before, with no plans, just to see what comes along but what about if you just keep going? That’s the theme of this week’s song, someone just getting up, leaving, and never coming back.

This particular song’s story is haunting and maybe…inadvertently to be sure…a little creepy.

Fastball is a band out of Austin, Texas. Bassist Tony Scalzo heard the story of Lela and Raymond Howard, an elderly couple who left for a family reunion one day and never showed up. He imagined that they just kept going, on with a new life, leaving everything and everyone behind…just living on the road. It’s a romantic fantasy, but those kinds of things don’t always turn out the way you want.

The song is The Way and it is ALWAYS on our road trip playlist. A ballad about leaving it all behind, it features a slightly Latin flavored guitar and rhythm, while featuring those haunting lyrics…”they left before the sun came up that day…they drank they wine and they got to talking, They now had more important things to say…where were they going without ever knowing the way?”

Haunting lyrics give way to a chorus reflecting everybody’s fantasy at this point…”anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold, it’s always summer, they’ll never get cold, they’ll never get hungry, they’ll never get old and gray…” Warning: the chorus is a serious brain worm and will stay in your head for weeks.

It’s a fun fantasy to listen to with some great guitar licks and wonderful harmonies. So what’s so creepy? Actually, nothing in the song itself. It turns out that after Scalzo wrote and recorded the song, Lela (who had Alzheimer’s) and Raymond (who had recently had brain surgery) were found dead at the bottom of a canyon near their abandoned car. Fantasy rarely squares with real life.

Anyway, it’s a great song and I think you’ll enjoy it and want to add it to your collection. Here’s Fastball with The Way. Enjoy!

-Darryl