A couple of weeks ago, I posted the story behind Burning Sage. Today I’ll tell you about “Tucumcari Tonight,” another track off the new album.
About six years ago, I was driving through New Mexico and saw a billboard that said “Tucumcari Tonight.” It struck me as a little funny, as it was obviously a tourist promotion, and if you’ve ever been to Tucumcari, you know it’s a pretty small town out in the desert hills of Interstate 40. Not much around there. And it’s also probably most notable for being name-dropped in Little Feat’s iconic song, “Willin”’ (“I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah”).
It also struck me because “Wiilin’” was Jamie’s favorite song. If you don’t know, Jamie Galloway was my bandmate and best friend who passed away a few years back. I knew at that moment that I was going to write a song called “Tucumcari Tonight,” maybe not as a direct reference to him, but in honor of him.
As with a lot of song ideas, I sat on this for a time and then story came to me. I don’t remember where or when (I was probably driving), but I got the line “I’m twelve hours away, but I can make it in nine,” and immediately knew that this would be the first line of the story for the song “Tucumcari Tonight.” As I thought about it more, I pictured this being a trucker song, like “Willin’l, and even more than that, a 40-years-later follow up to that masterpiece. I also decided to use one of the quick chord progressions from it.
From there, I did two things- wrote it ambiguously enough that it relates to anyone, but also threw in some very autobiographical references. “I know this old hotel off exit 335, smoke cigarettes in the parking lot, watch them semis whistle by,” references a hotel I stayed at with Jamie (he smoked the cigarettes). In later years, I stayed there again with my son, and not by coincidence; I had a significant father/son talk with him in that very same parking lot. It’s a very personal song.
I wrote it kinda as two lovers trying to reach each other (thanks to Mikayla Braun for singing with me), but in reality it’s just me writing a song of hope, that I’ll one day meet up again with my friend when it’s my turn to leave the physical plane and join him beyond the cosmos.
I’ve been messing with some video apps, so I threw this together. I hope you dig it. And I hope the guys from Little Feat would be proud of it too.