My friend Neal introduced me to the band The Innocence Mission. And after the 1990s, I’d forgotten about them for a long time. A really long time. Since that first record with Black Sheep Wall and Wonder Of Birds, really.
At the end of a hard, busting-ass, exhausted beyond all reason 10 days (which is 8 too many) in Vegas for work in 2005… I staggered into a record store (when there were such things still) and heard a very familiar voice coming over the speakers. And the voice was singing lyrics that I interpreted to be: “Walking around… you know I’ve had enough of this travel…” which I can tell you I assuredly had done as well.
The next song has a line “under the gray Pennsylvania sky…” which pretty much sums up the 11 years I spent living in Pittsburgh.Tired and wan, I tried to resist these weird connections to my situation… but I finally broke and went to the counter. This voice, with its high yet warm timbre, was perfectly suited to my mood of being just ready to flee town.
“What is this you’re playing?”
“What is this you’re playing?”
“The Innocence Mission,” the guy said…
“Wait — Bright as Yellow? That band is still around?”
Immediately bought it, it was their only copy - they had to take it out of the player for me, but it was the end of the disc anyway. The thing that stunk was I couldn’t even play it until I got home, but the song was perfect mood for the mental state I was in. The “travel” song ran through my head on repeat on the cross-country flight, until I got home, and put the disc in and started to put myself together again.
Immediately bought it, it was their only copy - they had to take it out of the player for me, but it was the end of the disc anyway. The thing that stunk was I couldn’t even play it until I got home, but the song was perfect mood for the mental state I was in. The “travel” song ran through my head on repeat on the cross-country flight, until I got home, and put the disc in and started to put myself together again.
It was years later that I realized the line is actually:
Walking around… you know I’ve had enough of this <trouble>…
Dang. Oh well, I still love the Befriended CD quite a bit. That’s my favorite of their discs. Both songs mentioned, Walking Around and Look For Me As You Go By are in the video above.
On a related front, when working up video slideshows of our trip photos I used that song and a number of Pennsylvania bands for the video I made from our 2007 visit to the Frank Lloyd Wright house, Fallingwater — some of those pics you can see here. Alas, I can’t put the video on YouTube, they ding me for using music that’s not mine.
