Heading "Straight On Till Morning" For Twenty-Five Years

The first CD I ever owned was "Four". I remember walking into the now defunct store in the local plaza, looking through the racks of CDs on the shelf, and finding that electric green cover imprisoned in the hard plastic shell albums were kept in back then. My neighbor had played the album so many times when we would work up the nerve to do a backflip on his large trampoline, with "Way To Fall" being about as apropos a song as could be for that purpose. It was already tied to good times, and even if I wouldn't understand the record until much later, those years were filled with countless replays, especially of "Hook".

When it was finally time for the follow-up, the first hints came in the form of "Carolina Blues", which was not at all what a casual listener such as myself was expecting. There was almost no blues to be found on "Four", despite the band's name, which led me to feel a bit betrayed when the cyclical lyrics of the song tried to show me the roots of the band's sound. It was an odd choice for a single, which makes complete sense to me now, and it set up the band's conflict between trying to be themselves and trying to generate another hit to sustain their success.

"Most Precarious" was that attempt, which many people see as pandering to the charts by attempting to re-write "Run Around". The song would never become a hit, which would be a theme moving forward, but it did serve as the tying thread between the two albums I could use to find my way into this bigger, more varied world.

Success often allows for indulgence, and that's what this record was all about. They explored the blues, going furthest with the closing "Make My Way", a dirty and bitter song that seriously tested the patience of those who wanted to hear more 'three minute ditties' from the band. To this day, it joins "Mountain Cry" in their catalog as songs I have never connected with on any level. I wanted the hooks, if you pardon the pun, and the quirkiness that made Blues Traveler stand out from the others.

That would reveal itself in short order. "Felicia" spit out rapid-fire lyrics over a bouncing groove I still can't quite label. No one besides John Popper would write a line about his 'coy facade of vast indifference'. That was perfectly in line with the way he talked in "Hook" about if he were to 'sing with inflection'. They are both lines that require you to pay attention, to know a bit more about language than much of the monosyllabic lyricism that filled the short and snappy melodies of the pop charts. What would you expect from someone who wrote "Sweet Pain" referencing Cyrano De Bergerac?

"Psycho Joe" would be an eye-opener, not just because it told the story of a criminal being executed, but for being the first time I ever heard the term 'shiv-shank'. What did you learn from the music you were listening to at the age of thirteen? I learned those terms, I learned I could not keep pace with Popper's lightning quick lyrics in the second verse of "Business As Usual", and I learned albums can be quite messy affairs.

While "Four" held together with attitude and production, "Straight On Til Morning" was a universe expanding in every direction, an album in the same sense a lifetime of photographs from different places and times are when put on the same sheets of paper. Loving one song meant nothing about the next, and figuring out whether you loved the album required a slide-rule for the math. "Four" was an easy album to form an opinion on, whether you wanted the context behind it or not. This time, though, was an entirely different beast.

To this day, I'm still not sure if I know how I feel about the album. There are times when I think it's the best thing Blues Traveler ever made, and there are other times when I grow beyond frustrated with the few tracks I hear veering too far from the center. Maybe getting this record at the age I did, and having years to absorb what I was hearing, gave me perspective on the ways music could surprise, challenge, and disappoint. This album did all three of those things, and still does.

It's funny for me to look back at this record now, and to note how much a seriously flawed album is still a part of me. There are so many albums today I listen to that I would easily say are better as a whole, yet they don't make the same kind of impact on me. Many of them slough away with the slightest breath blowing on them, and yet many of these songs are indelible. This isn't "Peter Pan", and I'm not saying this lost boy will never grow up, but some feelings never age. Maybe that's the lesson I'm supposed to take from all this.