May is here and so is another installment of Acoustic Blend!
This month we are dipping into the archives and going on a road trip through some of my favorite traveling tunes — and inspired by a favorite book of mine, Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller.
We’ll lead off the hour with a track from John Mayer’s Born and Raised album and then let Green River Ordinance launch us into our journey, which is fitting because that’s where Through Painted Deserts begins (are you following me here?). Just in case I haven’t lost you yet, the song below is not in the show but is another one from Born and Raised that sets the tone for adventure:
One of my favorite adventure / road trip stories is the film Into the Wild, and we’ll be including a few instrumentals from the soundtrack this hour — mainly because they give me that groovy, meandering feel. There’s something about setting off into the wild unknown that nourishes the soul, even as it allows us to shed the familiar in exchange for something new.
I would be remiss to exclude a couple of my own road trippin’ songs (“I Miss the View” and “Portland”), which will play alongside a couple original songs from my friends Scott Greeson, Linda Hicks, and Joe Peters. Our quote is a selection from Through Painted Deserts, which includes the following:
I remember the sweet sensation of leaving, years ago, some ten now, leaving Texas for who knows where … and I could not have known that that if I had been born here, I would have left here, gone someplace south to deal with horses, to get on some open land where you can see tomorrow’s storm brewing over a high desert. I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God’s way.
Acoustic Blend airs this Saturday, May 8 at 8pm EDT on WBAA AM 920 in Lafayette / West Lafayette, and streaming live on wbaa.org. You can view the playlist at barrettmyers.com and below, once the show airs. ‘Til next month!