Dreamers Rise
An Open Notebook
And for those who choose the twisty road, prefer it to the straight
Let joy beat out old misery, as love will conquer hate.
 Illustration by Henry L. Stephens from The Goblin Snob (ca. 1855) | |||||
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A sort of electronic broadside, composed of rants and reviews, conceits and speculations, and whatever else feels the need to be here. Issued as chance will have it. Spell of Wheels Here's what Peter Case had to say about this song a few years back: “Spell of Wheels” is a tale of an experience my son Joshua had in the winter of 1991 when he took a trip North from Kansas City. He's been my road manager for a while, and he lives in Austin and plays in a band called Gold. It's the urban myth of the black car — an adventure in the dark labyrinth of the American Midwest. Since I started playing it live, people have started coming up to me with their own similar stories.Case's lyrics tell the story with great economy, but he also cuts away from the main event a couple of times to reflect on the way people and destinies cross paths, or more often don't cross paths but just go their own way in the dark. The point being that you never know: while you're driving along the road in the middle of a blizzard there may be an airplane invisibly soaring over you packed with people you'll never meet, but then again there just might be a black car creeping up on you from behind … (The geography of the song puzzled me for a while, since the “Westport” I think of is a swanky town on the Connecticut shore. Apparently it's also a neighborhood in Kansas City.) Kansas City as the first snow of the year begins to fallI love some of the little touches in the song, things you could easily miss on the first few listens: the road turning “like a screw”; spending “the winter in monochrome”; the sense of relief to be around ordinary “small time criminals” instead of psychos with shotguns. And I wonder if it's one of the five kids or Peter Case, on some other occasion in some different place, who's singing “I'm on my way back home to you”? Peter's written several other tunes about being on the road and trying to stay connected, and he's adept at weaving different time frames into a single song (listen to “On My Way Downtown” or “Beautiful Grind”). The spell of wheels is always calling us. “Spell of Wheels” can be found on Full Service No Waiting as well as on Peter's Vanguard retrospective, Who's Gonna Go Your Crooked Mile? The lyrics above are from the Vanguard site (since removed); more current info on Peter's activities can be found on his website and at his blog, and Peter has posted some mp3s from his album in progress at his myspace. June 10, 2006; updated October 2007 [ Permalink ]
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