Floyd Jones

And he had something to say about being on the road again. The something he knew in 1953 had its origins in a 1928 tune called “Big Road Blues” by Mississippi Delta bluesman Tommy Johnson. In 1968 Canned Heat adapted Jones’ song into their groovy, droning version with Alan Wilson’s high falsetto lending the tune a curious, lonesome feel. As a child in Puerto Rico, I remember sitting on the cool tile of the living room floor, studying the Canned Heat album cover, listening as the vinyl played on the turntable, wondering about that long, old, lonesome road and why the man had to sing about it that way.

For my east coast Live Wire tour (just wrapped up), I took a piece of that lament - making my band’s version of it the opening song at every show. In my interpretation, I can’t help but build from the soft falsetto to a wailing howl at the end “and I ain’t going down that long, old, lonesome road all by myself; I can’t carry you, baby, I’ll carry somebody else!”. By then, the band (Eric Burns on guitar, Seth Barden on bass & Joe Yount on drums) has leaned all the way in and we go from there. This iterative exchange across time, honoring and adapting the work of other musicians, is, for me, part of the great tradition of touring and performing live for whomever has come to listen in whatever venue we find ourselves.

My new EP - Live Wire - is its own homage to live music making. We recorded the 6 tracks the old school way: everyone in a room together, no headphones, no click track, no isolation booths - in other words: LIVE. The session was recorded and produced by the extraordinarily talented musician, poet & sound engineer, Reed Turchi, who I’ve now worked with on three projects (the Tannersville EP, the full-length album, Oceans of Kansas, and the Live Wire EP) and I hope for more.

The east coast tour took us to Atlanta, Charleston, Charlotte, Greensboro, DC and Philly and started, ignominiously enough, with a call to roadside assistance just 3 hours in. Our rental van lurched into neutral - in the middle of a Pennsylvania highway - and stayed that way, no matter what the gear. It was dangerous, droningly dull, and tense, as our driver pulled onto the shoulder of a truck stop exit ramp, Semis blasting pass us at disarming speeds. Some 9 or so hours later, around 1:30 the next morning, we pulled into our overnight location in two separate vehicles that then had to be exchanged for a white church van at Atlanta Intl airport. That’s the short version of a rather long day and night on the road (again).

The pluses, the bright side, the chits called in - are that this band stays cool. Trash talking and raising the temperature, but only as necessary to get things done. This quality is gold on the road. And once we got that roadside nonsense out of the way, we got to making music every night (and some days too).

We haven’t gotten around to a proper studio recording of our version of On The Road Again, but we did record it in one of our Brooklyn rehearsals and I made a video for it based on images I’ve filmed while on the road. Here it is.