In February 2006, Ben and I took the stage at Tuft’s University for a short set with two new bandmates: Alex Lynch on bass and Tim Weed on fiddle. We’d found both through Craigslist, each having responded to our ad seeking players to form an acoustic-based Americana band, and I don’t recall having auditioned anyone else. Alex was the first to reply. He came from a punk/metal background, far different from the hippie jamband world Ben and I had been immersed in, but he was seeking a side project to tap into mellower musical interests. Alex was steady, both as a player and person—the personification of punctual—and given our persistent inability at the time to hold onto bassists, we were smitten. Tim came next. Tim, despite his smokey surname, was remarkably academic, as far as bandmates go: quiet, thoughtful, and classically-trained. We won the lottery when we landed Tim. He was (and still is) a brilliant player whose weepy double-stops and blistering solos added immediate street cred to the songs Ben and I were writing in this country-folk idiom somewhat new to us.
Two decades later, I’d be lying if I told you I can recall every detail of that first Jo Henley show at Tuft’s, but what I will never forget is stepping onto that stage in our snap-button shirts and the immediate two-step train beat of “And That’s Why I’m Gone.” Pure joy! It was like dreaming about something and then experiencing it exactly as you’d hoped. That was it. I was hooked. I never wanted to do anything else.
But as wonderful as an acoustic band was, we wanted a drummer, and once again we hit the jackpot. To this day Tien-Yi remains among the most talented humans I’ve ever known. Stanford-educated, salsa dancer, graphic designer, pianist, drummer—and those were just the resume bullet points I learned early on. Later, all low-key casual in a stuffy shoebox of a Cambridge rehearsal space, I’d learn she was a Pushcart-nominated fiction writer (who would go on to write the critically acclaimed novel Everything Here is Beautiful), and eventually a proud mom to two amazing young men, and honestly I could go on and on. But let me back up and state the obvious: in a world of sweaty, bearded, PBR-guzzling bro-drummers, ours was a pretty, charismatic Chinese woman with an effervescent jazzy touch behind the kit. Check and mate, dudes.
OK cool. So we had a band. Now we needed gigs, and to get gigs we needed a polished studio recording of our music. Enter Tim Lynch. Ben and I had worked with Tim on other projects in the ten years prior (and since), so he was the first person we turned to for an EP. We took our 7 best songs, rehearsed the hell out of them, and drove 3 hours west to Tim’s studio in my hometown of Schenectady, NY. We spent a couple days tracking our parts and that was it. Relatively old-school, as modern studio-work goes. Not a lot of bells and whistles. A simple capture of what our small-but-mighty band sounded like in that that moment in time. We were excited! We had a record!
Sought-after Boston-area photographer Liz Linder shot the cover and our promo materials. Liz was a total pro and certainly out of our price range, but Then-Yi knew her and “cashed in a favor.” Garbed in our best Americana-rocker-chic attire, we met Liz in an abandoned parking lot in South Boston and did whatever she told us to do. Stand here, run here, hold this, please stop doing that with your hair. The front cover is our booted feet. The back is us reflected in a side-view mirror. I love both images, but especially the back. It’s how I remember those days: young, smiling, excited, slightly blurry, trying to act cool.
I distinctly recall listening to a rough mix of Long Way Home while driving back to Boston from the Adirondacks on a gorgeous July day that summer before the album came out, mind blown, heart full, and so, so grateful. “Voyeur Love” and “Airmail” were the oldest of the songs; Ben and I had had been playing them for a hot minute as an acoustic duo. The rest came to life in the teeny apartment my wife and I shared on Commonwealth Ave. Ben lived a couple blocks away and he’d walk over to work on our tunes, or I’d go there, and those songs to me, although country-flavored, sound like the city. Ellen and I lived on the third floor; the lyric, “Take away the ledge and it’s over/Step on air until you fall,” in “No One Knows Heartache But You” is me looking out the open window and dreaming up a story on a hot summer night. I love the hushed, brushed drums in that song and Tim’s rip-your-heart-out solo when the key changes. “Met a man by the train/He’s standing in the rain selling bibles for a change,” in “On My Way” always conjures images of pre-Big Dig Boston, when the gritty, elevated North Station T platform had yet to be buried underground, and the colorful characters who hung around each morning as commuters, Ben and I among them, streamed by. “Just Like Rain” I wrote about my niece. “And That’s Why I’m Gone” is a less-than-flattering rearview-mirrored glimpse at my hometown, a place at the time I was happy to leave but have since come to cherish and now proudly live near again. “Fingerlakes” is my nostalgic ode to my and Ben’s Ithaca days/daze. Everyone played beautifully, those jangly Martin guitars and mournful fiddle and sparkly mandolin and the air-tight, bluegrassy rhythm section that ties it all together. Lyrically, I hear semiautobiographical beat poetry that in sometimes makes me wince—”Voyeur Love,” catchy as it is, finds itself on ice for long stretches because I struggle to square its coffeeshop observations, fluffy as foam, when I have heartier material in our catalog to dig into. I say that, and yet over the past week we’ve pulled “Voyeur” off the shelf, that old friend of ours, revisited its poppy, sugary melody, and, well, fun is fun, ain’t it, and who doesn’t want fun in their life? I don’t envision a permanent return to the live rotation, but we’re enjoying it for now. Plus we can jam the heck out of it.
Nothing lasts forever, of course, and this iteration of the band was no different. It morphed. It changed. It ran its course. You play in bands long enough, this is inevitable. None of that is important today as I sit here reflecting on the 20th anniversary of this little 7-song EP that in so many ways changed my life—and absolutely for the better. The memories making music and recording LWH with Ben, Tien-Yi, Alex, and Tim I wouldn’t give up for anything, and when we plug in Friday, October 16—one day shy of Long Way Home’s 20th birthday—we’ll bring the spirit and earnestness and love of those days with us. “Us” now is still Ben and me, and now my son Anthony, who has his own drumming style, but one most certainly influenced by Tien-Yi’s touch, which he’s grown up absorbing on a cellular level.
Anyway, folks, come on out next Friday, October 16, at Artisanal Brew Works at 6:30 pm sharp and help us raise a glass to Long Way Home!
PS: I believe we still have a few physical copies, and I know its exists out there on eBay and the like, but it's on all your favorite streaming platforms too, so go give it a listen!
