Call Of The Road

Words from Allan Thomas:

‘Call Of The Road’ was inspired by my friend and co-writer Ed Haaker, who I’ve written many songs with. One day we were kicking around ideas for our next collaboration of songs for his second album, and he said “how about a song about heading out on the road in an old beat-up truck and traveling across the country with no particular destination except east out of LA.?”

That struck a chord with me as I had done just that many times especially in my early 20’s, when at the drop of a hat I’d hitchhike across the US from east to west or west to east, looking for who-knows-what but feeling a driving need to explore and see what was “out there”. Ed and I wrote the lyrics, he in LA and myself on Kauai via FaceTime, getting together for once a week writing sessions.

I was very inspired by the concept of the idea and immediately went into a lyric writing frenzy day and night. When Ed and I had our next writing session we polished it up and began wondering who we would ask to write the music.

I had been super busy working on my upcoming 8th album and writing a lot of lyrics by myself at the time and so didn’t have time to tackle the music for this lyric, as it takes me forever to complete music for a lyric these days, perfectionist that I am. Ed and I have previously worked with my old buddy Bryan Kessler and also Michael Ruff to write music for our lyrics but since we had utilized both of them recently we thought it would be cool to ask my buddy and co-writer Jim Kimo West to have a crack at it. Jim is a wonderful guitarist, Grammy winner, and guitarist for Weird Al for many years. He plays and writes music in slack-key tunings which I absolutely love. He was stoked that we asked him to join the endeavor.

We sent him the lyric not expecting anything but within three days he send the track with HIM singing lead and backing vocals, with acoustic and electric guitars and a keyboard pad. We were in shock having never heard Jim sing before and were floored by its awesomeness and the whole rest of the track to boot. Turns out he thought I would sing it and was only recording what he thought was a rough vocal so we could hear what the melody was. WRONG! We loved it through and through, and asked him if he would be one of Ed’s featured guest artists on the album. He agreed and thus it was his first release with him singing lead on a track.

Soon after we had James Taylor bassist and longtime AT bassist Jimmy Johnson play fretless bass, followed by master percussionist M.B. Gordy playing drums and some tasty percussion at Jim’s suggestion.

Fast froward a year and I’m searching the AT archives for songs for my new album and I remembered Call Of The Road and thought “hey maybe Ed won’t mind if I record my own lead vocal to the already finished track”, as I had done before with some of the tracks Ed and I wrote and recorded for his first album. He (and Jim) loved the idea so that’s what I did. It was big fun to sing to Jim’s track with all the instruments and backing vocals already in place.

After I had recorded my lead vocal I mixed the track as close as I could get it to what I was hearing in my head, then sent it to my old friend and AT mixer Paul Northfield (Rush, Roberta Flack) in Montreal. He added his exceptional expertise and magic dust to the track and voila, here it is.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I and maybe it will accompany you on your next road trip… AT

Read more here: https://allanthomas.bandcamp.com/track/call-of-the-road