CAN YOU HEAR THE FOGHORN?

From mid-2003 to late 2004, I toured regularly across America with Wrangler Brutes, the good-time hardcore punk band I sang(?) for. These tours stand out to me now as separate from other tours I’d made with other bands in the 1990s. The internet made everything easier, but 9/11 made everything scarier, and by that point, each of us had seen a lot of the United States. I was in my mid30s and grappling with the realization that there was to be no more of that see-the-oil-fields-at-first-light romance of the open road. I was playing the same cities, often the same clubs, and sharing bills with bands that might as well have been the same ones I'd played with a decade earlier. Touring was no longer so new and exciting for any of us.

Perhaps because of this, my bandmates and I stumbled onto a new way to pass the time while driving from city to city. We’d listen to the same albums on repeat, sometimes at intervals throughout the drive, or the week, or the entire tour. There was no set criteria for which albums we’d listen to over and over and over again. The work had to present itself. I’m not sure any of us set out to listen to the albums on repeat. It just sort of happened.