Q: what's "the road" about? (which road, specifically?)
A: more of a writing experiment. written in early 2012. hadn't written anything in a long time, and 2011 was more about chasing 'normal' writing techniques, and writing using text and recorders, using verse-chorus form, etc... But at this point i was getting restless and missed the days when i used to write songs on paper, beginning to end, in the library. (string-writing, or chain-writing ... train-writing .. whatever you want to call it). So i just hit the page, and 'the road' came out. i just went wherever i wanted to go, and the whole thing stays about equal melodic and harmonic density, yet without any real repeating patterns of any kind. changes keys all over the place. a fun time to get really frisky with key changes. might be inspired by some of the crazier donald fagan writing. the lyrics just came out automatically.  everything changes after the "now i know" part .... and i'm not sure exactly what that means. in a song like this about "searching" it might seem surprising to eventually "find" the thing! but it just happened. and the mood sounds a bit strange after that, especially converging on the last line (which i didn't know was going to be the title until the end) .... almost feels like i'm saying everything's fine and i found my way, but it's obvious listening to the harmonic mood that something's not totally cool.