Driving has always meant one thing to me - Music. Long trans-Rockies car trips with our family introduced us to classic Paul Simon, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Eagles, and Gordon Lightfoot. As I got older trips to summer camp on the coast were an opportunity to share new tunes, discover bands, rediscover songs we loved as children. The older I got the less I was able to drive even short distances without a CD or an exceptional radio station, even planning playlists to the geography of my trip.
Leaving Calgary the other day I knew would need something special. I would need a few songs with encouraging beats, thoughtful lyrics, and the mood of a journey. Mumford and Sons would do nicely. A good banjo always says "we are off on a great adventure!" The Cave came on the line "I need freedom now and I need to know how to live my life as it's meant to be" rang more true that ever before. The encouragement I needed to not just go back to bed.
The impact of music hit me harder as I was reaching the top of Scott Lake Hill, half hour hill as my parents always referred to it when travelling home from the coast. Alberta Bound, the Paul Brandt version not the Gordon Lightfoot, turned up on my shuffle. On a perfect Alberta morning, golden prairies spread out before gleaming mountain peaks under that seemingly endless cerulean Alberta sky, the song tugged at the strings of this prairie girl's heart. "Ohhhh! It Doesn't matter where I go
This place will always be my home, yeah I have been Alberta Bound for all my life and I'll be Alberta Bound until I die." I felt both unbelievably epic and so uncool all at once, sobbing along to my stereo in my loaded to the hilt volvo station wagon speeding west down the trans-Canda. Kind of comforting to a born and raised Calgarian heading out to the big city on the ocean.
Leaving Calgary the other day I knew would need something special. I would need a few songs with encouraging beats, thoughtful lyrics, and the mood of a journey. Mumford and Sons would do nicely. A good banjo always says "we are off on a great adventure!" The Cave came on the line "I need freedom now and I need to know how to live my life as it's meant to be" rang more true that ever before. The encouragement I needed to not just go back to bed.
The impact of music hit me harder as I was reaching the top of Scott Lake Hill, half hour hill as my parents always referred to it when travelling home from the coast. Alberta Bound, the Paul Brandt version not the Gordon Lightfoot, turned up on my shuffle. On a perfect Alberta morning, golden prairies spread out before gleaming mountain peaks under that seemingly endless cerulean Alberta sky, the song tugged at the strings of this prairie girl's heart. "Ohhhh! It Doesn't matter where I go
This place will always be my home, yeah I have been Alberta Bound for all my life and I'll be Alberta Bound until I die." I felt both unbelievably epic and so uncool all at once, sobbing along to my stereo in my loaded to the hilt volvo station wagon speeding west down the trans-Canda. Kind of comforting to a born and raised Calgarian heading out to the big city on the ocean.
Here are some snippets of my playlist.
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