Loading home…
When COVID first shut everything down, I started playing and recording a bunch of solo piano sets from my living room. It felt good to play and it held my sanity together, and it was also the only avenue I had to continue working as a performing musician. As grateful as I was (and still am) for that opportunity, after a few months it was starting to feel like too much staring at the same walls in the same empty room. I decided if the only option right now is to play to empty spaces, then I wanted to do that in a giant canyon or on a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere. If people can’t be a part of the equation for the time being, let’s lean into that and take it further - get really far out there away from everyone and play there. It’s one of those things that would never have worked in normal times. But I realized there’s two ways to look at this time - you can look at all of the things we can’t do, everything we’re missing out on, everything we’ve lost… or you can find the things that you can only do now that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise, and seek those things out and make them happen. I played a set in Yosemite and I was only able to pull that off because the park was practically empty and had far fewer people in it than any other summer. So there’s that aspect of it. Then there’s the time it’s taken to get to all of these remote places and do this “tour” - it’s completely irrational and inefficient from a touring or logistical perspective, and there would never be time to do it with the usual schedule touring musicians keep. But right now, we’re all kind of in this holding pattern, sitting around waiting. So there’s plenty of time to do something different. And I desperately wanted to get outside - that’s where I’ve been feeling most okay during all of this. So we’re taking this crazy road trip in a self-contained little camper van and driving my gear out to these wild places and setting up and playing in settings I never in a million years thought I’d get to play music in.