4. Alabama Pines - Jason Isbell

I regret starting to write about Isbell songs because now I have to fight the temptation to write a post on every one of his songs that I love.

• Tour of Duty

• Outfit

• Goddamn Lonely Love

• Codeine

• Dress Blues

• If We Were Vampires

• Tupelo

• Something To Love

• Speed Trap Town

I mean, damn it!

It goes from something that’s meant to be about money and advice to a Jason Isbell fan site and we don’t want that.

I think.

No.

We definitely don’t. Hmmm.

But. This one is different. And it’ll also be the last one I’ll write about.

Probably. Maybe.

After I started my business — after moving on from the suburban stockbrokers I was in during the GFC — times were tough.

It was much more difficult to find people to work with, things were more expensive than projected and it took far, far longer to find my feet.

Like, years.

These were lean times and involved many, many hits to my ego and confidence.

My then-girlfriend-now-wife (TGNW from now on) and I spent a lot of time during that period planning trips and holidays that we could absolutely not afford.

A frequent dream was to return to the US, lob into LA then scoot over to New York for a few days and head south.

Pick up a car somewhere and just drive.

Drive through the Carolinas, Virginia maybe.

Put Kentucky and those horse fences on the list, check out the antebellum houses in Charleston, that hanging moss town Savannah.

Head west from there, up through Alabama.

Visit Birmingham, which we learnt about in school, see a high school football game and see what the fuss is all about.

Continue into Tennessee.

Tour Nashville, onto Memphis, Beale Street and Graceland.

Follow the river south into Mississippi.

Scope out the cotton fields, eat some barbeque, land in New Orleans.

Keep going — west through Texas, see some oil derricks.

Albuquerque, Santa Fe.

Then Nevada, see that canyon everyone’s always banging on about.

Through Vegas, Reno, Bakersfield, all the towns around and in between.

Find a diner, find a bar, find a drive in.

Take days, weeks, months.

What a trip we’d plan!

It was oddly motivating, but also dispiriting, to plan a trip you wouldn’t be able to take for years.

When you’re in that situation, neck deep and trying to push forward to find slightly higher ground, then slightly higher again and so on and so forth, it’s incredibly hard to maintain the faith that you’ll find your destination.

But planning those trips helped, just a little bit.

Because one day we’ll do it.

One day we’ll go.

One day it’ll happen.

One day.

At the same time, a dear friend of mine introduced me to Jason Isbell, and suggested I check out his album, ‘Here We Rest’.

I was pretty happy with the music I had on repeat at that stage, but thought I’d give it a crack.

So I put it on and the first track is Alabama Pines.

I’ve been stuck here in this town, if you could call it that, a year or two.
I never do what I’m supposed to do.
I don’t even need a name anymore.
When no one calls it out, it kinda vanishes away.

I was stunned and didn’t listen to anything but that album for a week.

This dream trip sat there, a shared pool of dreams and hopes and aspirations.

It was, for a very long time, our primary goal.

Then, in 2015, we talked about it and decided it was time.

It wouldn’t be the exact version of the dream we’d talked about. We couldn’t spare the time to take the required 85 days off to drive around America.

So we built a modified itinerary. We went, bought the tickets and started planning.

It’s probably not at all surprising when I say that the planning part is incredibly enjoyable for me.

Not all of it — I loathe comparison websites with the fury of a thousand suns — but it is, overall, exciting.

I’d also built out quite the playlist to keep me thinking about this trip.

And Alabama Pines was a frequent player.

Somebody take me home through those Alabama pines.

Just shy of obsession is an accurate description.

Wepicked the car up in Savannah. (Quick note here — Savannah is an absolutely stunning, dream of a town. I can see why so many Australian’s live there.)

On we drove, to Macon, Georgia. Then on to Montgomery the next day for lunch.

That day, driving along highway 85, two things happened:

1. The heaviest rain I’ve ever seen in my life hit us. We were reduced to driving at 20 miles per hour, behind a helpful semi-trailer with his hazards on for guidance.

2. When the rain eventually cleared, we were surrounded by seemingly huge pine forests.

We were, I was startled to realise, driving through those Alabama Pines.

I turned to share this revelation with my wife and saw that she’d fallen asleep.

So I played this song on repeat, and drove for another half an hour.

I thought about all the times we’d talked about this trip.

The times when this felt like an impossible dream.

The hundreds (thousands?) of times I’d listened to this song, pining for this foreign place.

The complex feelings that came from seeing people we know travel around the world, while we were ‘stuck’ at home.

I thought about the sacrifices we’d made to get here.

The late nights and weekends I’d worked, the mistakes and joys and worries.

The things we’d gone without, the gratification we’d delayed over and over again.

Achieving that goal, that aspiration — living that dream — was an incredible moment in my life.

And every time I hear this song now I think of those pines and that drive and that trip.