Refuge of the Roads

Happy birthday Joni Mitchell who it seems is an astonishing 68 today.  I know I'm getting on and all but hell...Joni is 68!

Nooooooo she's in her mid thirties surely.... forever.

For all the great work she's done over the years I always find myself going back again and again to Hejira. That voice, already a little smoke deepened by this album, and behind it the huge singing rolling fretless bass of Jaco Pastorius. Thats not to mention Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock.

The album is full of road songs but this is the one, the title track, that I can never get out of my head.

More so now than ever since I recall listening to it as the future Mrs B. and I rolled up I-95 from Salem to Bar Harbor for around 9 hours.

That was my first 'road trip'. I'm a Brit and I dont think it's possible to  drive in any direction for 9 hours in the UK without hitting the ocean, certainly not at a steady 60mph. It was only mid June and the roads were near empty once we got into Maine. We didnt see another car in either direction for over an hour at one point. And this was the interstate. I never figured out how the toll covered the cost of the poor guy out there collecting it as we seemed to be the only $1.00 he collected in that hour.

And Mrs. B of course drove the whole thing because being a Brit I'd happily managed to get by for 44 years without learning to drive. You can be sure that that didnt last long once I got here to stay. I still don't like it mind you and Mrs. B still drove it on the same route this summer, our first time back there since.

Of yes, Joni's birthday.... heres some more from the album.

Coyote.



68... well I'll be buggered!