Hitchhiking sounds so quaint when you think about it now, but back in the middle of the last century it was a bohemian, somewhat acceptable, but inherently dangerous mode of transportation. I took the gamble back in those days. There was a freedom to it, it was a dance between hiker and hikee. First thing, you assessed the driver and the situation before you even got in the car. Sometimes it was very companionable, sometimes you prayed the whole way to your destination and couldn’t wait to get out of the car. As a tomboy hippie chick, I stuck my thumb out a lot in the late 60s. I crisscrossed the state of Ohio, which is where I went to college, and then I hitchhiked up and down the California coast. You took your life in your hands each time. But there was the sense of being alive that was woven into the fabric of it, too. And the discovery; of new places, of people, of music. We joke about the vortex at Music Fog---this could have been the start of it, “I’ve come to look for America,” as Simon & Garfunkel sang.
Peter Case was a hitchhiker, too. His latest blog post is an in-depth reading about a hitchhiking journey he took, culminating by seeing Lightnin’ Hopkins at a gig in Boston. It is compelling, and actually more like reading a journal than a blog. It has such delicious detail and so captures the feel of those days. I love reading Peter’s stuff. I think it makes his music all the more relatable for where he’s been, where he’s coming from. That era, kids grew up with a cocoon around us that felt like an unreality. We needed to find substance somewhere. Day to day was boring and predictable. There was no magic to it, yet we knew that there was something out there, and we chased it. It is not unlike hitching a ride today on the internets, which can be just as dangerous, and winding up “somewhere else.” Read Peter Case here. And watch him here, where you're at, as we recorded him in September at Americana Fest in Nashville.
- Jessie Scott
