The Road to [insert small town name here]

While at work, I listen to my favorite radio station via their streaming audio on the internet. For eight or so hours a day, I enjoy the sounds of what they call “World Class Rock.” A mixture of 60s through today, they play everything from Depeche Mode to The Grateful Dead, Simon and Garfunkel to The Clash. To top it off, like many radio stations around the country, they have artists come play live in their studio. The Studio C recordings are top notch, people. Every year they release a CD of the year’s best sessions; only 30,000 are released and they always sell out within a few hours.

This past week they played all of their Studio C recordings in alphabetical order by song name. They started at 6:00am Monday morning and wrapped up late Friday afternoon. Yours truly listened to a good chunk of the songs and I found myself frequently turning my computer speakers up past a “reasonable volume” to enjoy those one-of-a-kind live versions of my favorite songs.

I don’t claim to have good tastes in music. It’s eclectic, limited and, at times, unadventurous. Seriously, I used to listen to New Kids on the Block and I still have a Lou Bega CD in my collection, I will judge no one on their musical tastes. To each his own, I say, even if it is Toby Keith or REO Speedwagon. Listening to Studio C recordings this week, it became apparent there were a fair number of artists or groups that played far more than others. One of those people was Lyle Lovett. I heard him at least once a day for the entire week. And listening to You Can’t Resist It, Private Conversation, and She’s No Lady (all of which are played on any normal day as well), not only reminded me how much I like Lyle Lovett, but it also brought back memories of Spring Break my junior year of college.

I’ve come to realize I don’t tell very many stories on this blog, and tend to just focus on the present, but I’m changing it up today. And yes, I realize it took me four paragraphs to get to the point of this post, but some people may have nothing to do today and might actually enjoy a long post.

Working as a live-in-staffer for three years of school, half of my spring breaks those years were spent working. The first year, my trip back to the 7200 to work was delayed because of a monstrous snowstorm that pummeled the area causing everything, including the university, to shut down for a couple days. My junior year, I took the second half off, hoping I wouldn’t get stranded in town when I had a chance to escape for a little vacation.

As luck would have it, the weather was perfect: sunny, crisp and clear. There would be no problems leaving town this time. One of my best friends from college (also a live-in-staffer) worked the same half of the break as me and we decided to take a little tour of our respective small hometowns for the remainder of the break; hers in the southeastern part of the state, mine in the north centralish region. We spent a couple of days in each place, as neither one of us had been to the other’s hometown before. We ate at the local dives, gave the 5 minute tour (because that’s all the time we needed), and just hung out. If it weren’t for the slight drama caused by the then-boyfriend, it would have been perfect, but I digress. Sure, it wasn’t tropical or wild and crazy, but it was my favorite college-spring break trip.

It was on this trip, during one of the many hours spent in the car, that I was first introduced to Lyle Lovett. Sarah had picked up some CDs she had left at home by accident, and those albums became the soundtrack for our trip from the CW to the BH. She was so excited to have found her Lyle Lovett CDs, and I didn’t really know what to expect. All I knew about Lyle Lovett (other than the general fact that he was a musician) was that he was once married Julia Roberts. Needless to say, with no real expectations, when Sarah put in The Road to Ensenada, I was completely surprised. He wasn’t country, rock or folk, but played with hints of jazz and blues…who was this guy and why hadn’t I been listening to him? Every song I hear by him, I like, a lot.

I very rarely buy CDs, my library is very small, and the music I do listen to, tends to be mix CDs, or albums I’ve ripped and burned from other people. One of these days, I’m not going to feel like I’m so tight on money and I might start frivolously shopping again. When I do, I will undoubtedly be beefing up my CD collection. And without a doubt I will be buying a lot of Lyle Lovett albums, among the random other CDs I should have owned years ago.

Until then, I’ll just keep turning up the radio every time one of his songs comes on the radio.