1970's styled Folk Song. Written from personal experience when leaving home. A powerful testament to the will of one woman to try new things and escape the monotony of the same old daily grind.

1 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, FOLK: like Joni



Details:
I've been writing silly poems and song lyrics for as long as I can remember. When I was little, we lived in Chicago, and my Dad used to play a rhyming game with me. I'd say a word, he'd say one that rhymed, then back to me until we couldn't think of any more new words. I always knew when it was time to go to bed because I'd say "ham", he'd say "scram." I'd say "caboose", he'd say "vamoose" and so on. When I was in high school I wrote several humorous poems for the school newspaper. I went to college in California and became more interested in acting than writing. I met my first husband at college - we were married right after graduation and had two children. One year my husband gave me a guitar for my birthday. I started taking lessons and loved it. I could now put simple tunes to the silly poems I liked to write. When we went camping I'd write songs for my kids and we'd sing them around the campfire. Once in a while I'd try writing a serious song but was never satisfied with the results.

I wrote the lyrics to "Road Leadin'Somewhere" in August 1981. I was divorced, my kids were in college, I was tired of working temporary jobs as a typist and I was thinking about driving to Portland, Oregon and trying to start a new life. I had just started a boring one-week temporary job - the kind where you aren't given much to do but are supposed to look busy doing it. I was trying to decide if I wanted to move and thinking about everything I'd be leaving behind and the words to the song just came to me so I scribbled them down on the back of a used envelope. When I got home, I tried putting the words to music. The tune I came up with was pretty good but I was never happy with it.

I drove to Portland two weeks later during a hot August in a Pinto with no air conditioning. I thought I had a place to stay when I got there but things didn't work out, plus the Pacific Northwest was in a recession because of concern over saving the spotted owl. So I didn't have an easy time but I never regretted the move, and three years later I met the man who became my second husband and moved with him back to the Midwest.

"Road Leadin' Somewhere" kind of got lost in the shuffle. I made some half-hearted attempts to find a publisher and then pretty much forgot about it. I also quit playing the guitar because I had to go out and learn a living. Then last year I decided to play some silly songs for my two young grandsons - they loved it. Their favorite songs are "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and a song I wrote for their mom when she was eleven called "I Don't Like Boys." I got to thinking about "Road Leadin' Somewhere", started playing it in a different key, made a few other changed and decided I had a good song after all. Played it for a friend. He thought I should make a CD and put it on CD Baby, so here it is. I hope you enjoy it.