MY BLUES TRAVELER STORY: A NOT-SO-BRIEF HISTORY OF FANDOM AND A NEW PROJECT

Hello, friends. I'm back! If you are wondering what I'm working on right now, this post is for you. I was able to provide an update on my current work in progress to John Popper and his lovely wife, Gidget, after a Blues Traveler show in Allegan, Michigan this weekend and figure it's safe to pass along some information now. But first, I want to tell you about my love for BT.

Blues Traveler has been omnipresent in my life for over thirty years. I have my dad to thank for that, sort of. Back in late 1995, he signed up for Columbia House to take advantage of the twelve CDs for one cent offer. Remember that? He told my siblings and me to pick two albums each from the catalog and he would order them for us. Naturally, we were over the moon. I puzzled over the options harder than I ever did over my homework at that age. In the end, my picks were an Alice In Chains record called Dirt and Everclear's Sparkle and Fade. For an eight-year-old, I listened to the radio a lot, recording songs I liked on cassettes and playing them back on my tape player lying awake at night with my headphones on. I had ideas of what I wanted. I had latched onto "Down In a Hole" and "Santa Monica" pretty tightly. My older brother, John, had gotten me into grunge and punk with a lot of songs I probably shouldn't have been listening to at such a young age. Anyway, I looked forward to the mail for weeks, but when the albums arrived, my dad took one look at the track listing for Sparkle and Fade and told me I couldn't listen to it (the album includes such songs as "Heroin Girl", "You Make Me Feel Like a Whore", and "My Sexual Life"). Ditto Dirt, although he had to read the lyric booklet to make that decision.

I was devastated. I thought about all the other bands I liked and all the other albums I could have ordered and probably threw a fit. Thankfully, Dad had ordered a copy of Blues Traveler's album four for himself and felt so bad that he offered it to me as damage control. four was released in September 1994 but "Run-Around" didn't really get radio traction (in my foggy memory) until mid-1995, so I loved the song but knew nothing else about the band. I knew even less about the other CDs he had ordered at that time, though, so I took him up on his offer and consoled myself by listening to four on his stereo in our family room. I was immediately hooked, no pun intended. "Run-Around" and "Hook" were of course the first songs I fell in love with, but as I wrote to the band in my shaky eight-year-old penmanship (not even sure I knew cursive yet) a few weeks later, "Crash Burn" was my favorite. After I wrote that letter, someone at the BT home office signed me up for their fan newsletter (Gigs At a Glance) and I grew even more attached. Then Live from the Fall came out, then Straight On Til Morning (possibly my favorite BT album), and I was obsessed, to put it mildly.

Over the years, it feels like every significant event and relationship in my life has been touched by Blues Traveler's music in some way. Surely, if you know me well, this does not surprise you. The first concert I ever went to was Blues Traveler with Pete Yorn on May 14th, 2001 at the State Theater in Detroit, which is now The Fillmore. I was in eighth grade at the time. Bridge had just been released that month and the band seemed to be everywhere with their Behind the Music episode premiering on VH1 and other TV appearances to follow including the music video for "Girl Inside My Head". When I graduated high school in 2005, I used most of the money I received at my graduation party to travel to Red Rocks (sorry, family!) with my dad, my high-school sweetheart, my best friend, his girlfriend, and my cousin for the annual 4th of July show. When that high-school sweetheart broke up with me in college, you better believe I listened to "She Isn't Mine" on repeat, and then "Leaning In" when I started dating my wife. In fact, let's just assume that for every crush or relationship I've ever had, there was a Blues Traveler song playing in the background.

But it runs even deeper than that. When I found out my grandma died in May 2000, I listened to "Fledgling" on the car ride to her house and cried. The first short story I read in front of people in high school was called "Graves for the Living" and was basically an adaptation of "12 Swords". The night before my wedding, I listened to "Yours" on repeat, trying to get the gravity of the next day to sink in before approaching the altar. When I became a dad, songs like "Orange in the Sun" and "Daddy Went A-Giggin" became favorites (my oldest daughter's favorite song when she was little was "You, Me, and Everything" so I used to sing that to her at bedtime). When I was dealing with severe depression, I remember listening to "Just Wait" and feeling the faintest glimmer of hope, which was just enough to start healing.

I'm giving you all this context for a reason, so bear with me. Only my parents, my siblings, and my wife know the depths of my fandom, but hopefully you can see from the preceding paragraph that it runs deep. My dad's favorite bands have, at times, been reported as The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, so that's how I try to frame my reverence for BT to him and similarly to others. Can you imagine talking to John Lennon or Robert Plant? That's how talking to John, Chan, Ben, Tad, and Brendan is to me. I idolized them growing up. I'm too old now to think of men as gods but when I was a kid they and Bob might as well have been. To many of my friends and acquaintances, the name Blues Traveler only conjures a memory of their hit songs, maybe their Grammy win, and maybe John's harmonica hat. But the band is so much more than "Run-Around", "Hook", and "But Anyway". They have unique depth and artistry that is often overlooked except by the most diehard fellow travelers. They are a force live and always have been, skirting along the periphery of a traditional jamband yet with the studio acumen that evades most members of that fraternity. They are all masters of their instruments, and John Popper is my favorite lyricist and vocalist of all time. (A brief aside: If all you know of Blues Traveler is "Run-Around" and "Hook", you should check out some of their other work, maybe pick an album and listen to it all the way through to see if it strikes you the way it strikes me. Everyone has different tastes but with Blues Traveler, I feel like there's something for everyone.)

This is all just background for what I really want to talk about, which is what happened in November 2000. I was thirteen then, just starting eighth grade. I had been shaken the year before when I heard the news of Bob Sheehan's passing on the radio and had no idea what his death and John's solo album, Zygote (a masterpiece), meant for the future of the band. Thankfully, John, Chan, and Brendan chose to honor Bob's memory by adding Tad and Ben and continuing their journey with new vigor or else I never would have seen them live, but three years after the 1997 release of Straight On Til Morning and before I knew where to look for regular band updates on the internet, I didn't know if I would ever hear a new Blues Traveler song.

Enter Decisions of the Sky: A Traveler's Tale of Sun and Storm. From 1996-1998, the band had been writing a concept album based partially on Aesop's fable about the Sun and the North Wind and partially on a broader tale of a sorcerer/warrior's trials. Then, from what I've gathered from the internet and a conversation with John, Bob passed and the record company didn't want to support such an ambitious project, so most of the songs were never recorded. However, when Tad and Ben were brought on board, the band did get together and record a four-song EP with highlights from the album. They released the songs for free(!) on their website one at a time between October and November 2000. I love all the tracks on that EP, the two songs that found their way onto Bridge, and all the ones that were never recorded but which can be found on the Internet Archive, but two in particular stood out to me: "12 Swords" and "Traveler's Suite". I was reading Lord of the Rings at that time ahead of the theatrical release of The Fellowship of the Ring the following December. I had been writing stories for years by then and knew I wanted to become a fantasy novelist. In other words, I was the perfect audience for songs about an "apprentice turned sorcerer" learning the ways of love and war.

"12 Swords" scratched the fantasy-genre itch for me, but it was (and is) "Traveler's Suite" that really left an impression. I was on the cusp of finally getting into jambands at that time, so the concept of a twenty-minute song with multiple movements was foreign to me, especially a studio track. I had never heard anything like it. It's been my favorite song for nearly twenty-six years now, and I still get chills during the "Color Me Gone" section. The band hasn't played it live since July 4th, 2006, so I've given up on hearing it in person, but I still listen to it regularly. I still imagine the world John's lyrics created. The swords. The sorcery. The chariots. The castles. The path. The woman with the light in her eyes. I've been living in that world since I was thirteen, and now I'm finally getting a chance to really play in it.

About a year ago, I pitched the band on writing a novelization of the concept album as well as bringing Justify the Thrill: Stories Inspired by the Music of Blues Traveler (a short-story collection I wrote and Post Mortem Press published in 2015), back into print. To my absolute ecstasy, the band supported the idea. A month later, I got to talk with John about the project and received valuable direction on the story. I started writing in earnest in October 2025 and, so far, it's the second longest book I've ever written at 120,000+ words...and I'm only halfway done. It's definitely an epic fantasy story, one which I hope to finish by the end of 2026 for a late 2027 release to coincide with mine and the band's fortieth years of existence. I cannot wait for you to read it. I might even share some sample chapters on this website if I'm able, just to (hopefully) whet your appetite.

So, that "dream project" I've referenced since last November? This is it. I'm so grateful to be working on it. I'm so grateful to the band and their management for trusting me with bringing this story to life. I can't remember having so much fun writing a book. A lot can happen in another year and there are still hoops to jump through, but I will try to keep interested parties updated along the way.

Thank you for visiting!