“Home on the Road” is about driving to California from Colorado on I-80. My partner and I were traveling with thousands of pounds of music gear, a big red velvet chair that I found at a thrift store (apparently I couldn't live without it), a makeshift bed squeezed between everything else, and of course, a cooler full of warm beer. We had just spent six isolated weeks in Salida, CO on a ranch writing and recording music. It is a miracle we made it out there in the first place with minimal automotive issues, because on the way back when it was a million degrees, the van overheated every 20 miles. Our money was spent and we couldn’t call anyone to fix or tow it. We just had to wait it out until the weather cooled down.
There is a page in the back of my journal that reads:
September 3rd, 2015
Somewhere in NV
4:00pm
Drinking Heineken in our underwear outside of Elko, NV at a rest stop.
We are too broke to cross the state line.
We’re rich in love.
xoxo
I found this page a year or so after taking the trip. The entry was hardly legible and without complete sentences, but it sparked an idea for a song. I used two of those sentences as lyrics in the song. It was written in October of 2016.
It was a 1979 Chevy Step-Van - all black. Picture an intimidating UPS truck. The van was always the biggest pain in my ass, and really, whoevers ass was storing it for us at the time. It was my partner's “daily driver” in high school and needless to say he had an attachment to it. It got 9 mpg, on a good day, and had heavy sliding doors that could easily take off a limb if you weren't careful. We left those doors open while driving because there was no AC and no stereo. But even so, the van became a home for so many good memories.
We demoed and rebuilt it countless times to make it fit the vibe of whatever we were doing. We painted the inside purple and took it to Burning Man and other festivals where we would deck it out in tapestries and twinkly lights. We drove it across the country and back a few times; and one time, when life was at a real low, we actually lived out of it. We parked it outside of an industrial neighborhood in East LA and it got graffitied with nothing but the word “Hypes 1” in shitty blue lettering. For such a cool canvas you think they could have been more creative. Anyways, we were always grateful for the shelter it provided.
I encouraged my partner to sell the van when we moved to Austin. Some nice lady from Waco had plans to make it into a food truck. I hope they are both doing well - the van and lady, I mean.
Side note: The lyric is “It’s 104 on the side of 85” because “80” didn’t rhyme.
Home on the Road
Verse 1:
Tired of feeling so close
And living with our heads down low
Hoping we can find a little bit of ourselves
Where the rubber meets the road
You gotta prime 79 black Chevy step van
I only got one thing on my mind
And we don’t need no plan
So fire it up, breathe it in slow
Gotta do it now before we get old
Chorus:
Shake down your salty spirit
The one I used to know
Let your dreaming mind
Free your wandering soul and
We gotta whole lot more to live for
Than this town
Let’s put the old van into drive and go
Making home on the road
Verse 2:
It’s 104 on the side of 85
At a rest stop
Heat gauge red lined
And I’ve got one thought to pass the time
It ain’t so great but it could be worse
So we crack a couple cold ones to lift the curse
When all we got to cheers to
Is being alive
We may be too broke now to cross the state line
But when we got nowhere to be we can’t make bad time
Chorus:
Shake down your salty spirit
The one I used to know
Let your dreaming mind
Free your wandering soul and
We gotta whole lot more to live for
Than this town
Let’s put the old van into drive and go
Making home on the road
Written by Taylor Rae
Home on the Road lyrics © TaylorRaeMusic (ASCAP)
