For years, I was a tumbleweed, rolling around rootless, never living in one place for more than a blink. I attribute this to a very unstable childhood. Every time we’d get semi-settled into a residence, the deck of cards would be thrown into the air and we’d scatter again. I started tallying the number of times I’ve moved throughout my life, but I stopped as the number neared forty.

I think I’m adjusting nicely to Married Life. Amadeus and I are happily entwined. We’re blooming like buttercups, and for the first time in my life, I feel rooted. Occasionally, I get a tiny bit confused about the fact that this is home. It feels tenuous at times, and my husband will remind me, “This is your house too.” For some reason I have little eye puddles, writing this. I’m going to say it again– this is home.

Though roots are sprouting, I’m fortunate to have wed a fellow tumbleweed, a musician who’s toured a lot over the years and seems to share the itch I get to hit the road from time to time. We did it last week, in fact. We’d bought tickets several months ago to see Gillian Welch and David Rawlings in Nashville. As the concert date drew near, we didn’t think we’d be able to go, because of all my stoopid health issues, because I’m unemployed, and because we’re now married, over insured and broker than the Ten Commandments. But Amadeus is a cool, spontaneous sort, and last Monday he texted me: “Let’s just go. It can be our Christmas present to each other.” On Wednesday, we were in the car, headed for the great state of Tennessee. The Gillian Welch 2011 Road Trip– woo hoo!

I’ve logged a lot of miles in my life. My internal odometer’s turned over at least three times. I’ve run from things, toward things, but now I’m just sitting beside this guy I love, enjoying every minute of the ride. The road stretches out in front of us like a lazy yawn, and because my foot once got tangled in my skirt when I was driving and I almost mangled us on some highway, I’m now relegated to the passenger seat, free to look at the trees and the rivers and the road kill. Amadeus is a great driver, and I like it when he cusses at bad ones. It’s a rare occurrence, but it breaks the monotony.

Mostly, we talk. Well, you know, I talk. Amadeus will ask me a question, and I take it from there, because my brain is a crazy highway map of twists and turns and exits, and before you know it, a great deal of time has passed before maybe, just maybe I’ve reached my mental destination. A lot of our conversations end with some variation of the words, “So, in answer to the question that you asked thirty minutes ago…”

I’m a storyteller, and I find that these road trips provide me with a delightfully helpless, captive audience. I told Amadeus tales from my weird-ass childhood and the family skeleton closet all the way from Little Rock to Memphis. He listened quietly and (I think) with interest, and finally he said, “You should be writing about this.”

I have to take a detour here and say that this is reason number 579 that I love my husband. He talks to me about my writing, knowing full well that he’s opening an industrial-sized can of worms. I tell him where I am with things. I spill stuff that’s been agitating in my head, share ideas and stories I’ve plotted. I whine about where I’m blocked and what my worries are. It’s like writer therapy, and it helps, it really does. I think he’s lost some hearing through his decades of playing loud music, so it all works out pretty well.

So on our Gillian Welch 2011 Road Trip, I talked to Amadeus about my recent writing roadblock: How to share the stories I want to write without making readers suddenly yearn to drink Clorox, or smother themselves with their own pillows. It may be interesting, but it’s pretty dark stuff. Anyone who’s non-military and has moved forty-plus times probably has some grimness in their past.

I was always drawn to the morbid and morose. I loved B horror movies from the minute my eyes focused. In first grade, I’d run to get the newspaper from the porch. I’d turn first to the obituaries, then I’d search for crime stories, followed by a reading of  the sad and hopeless letters to Ann Landers. I chased it all with the comic section. This daily reading ritual foreshadowed my worldview– we inhabit a harsh and grievous planet, but there’s Nancy and Sluggo too.

“So, I’m trying to figure it all out,” I told Amadeus. “I want to write these stories, and it’s easy for me to tell them, because they’re my stories. They don’t shock or depress me, but I feel responsible to my audience. I don’t want to be self-indulgent or sensationalistic. I want readers to feel uplifted, because really, it all has a happy ending.” He seemed to totally get my dilemma, and we sat quietly as he drove through the darkness while I mulled it over. I imagine he was on to other things, like how great it would be to sleep after driving for ten hours straight.

My sister and her husband live just outside of Nashville, and we stayed with them, which was wonderful, in part because she and her family are extremely sweet and funny and in part because she lent me her very cool $350 Michael Kors leather jacket to wear to the concert. My mind is nimble, and I deduced that it was $350 Michael Kors, mostly because she kept saying, “You’d better not let anything happen to my $350 Michael Kors jacket.”

I forgot to mention that I bounced in my passenger seat most of the way to Nashville. I’m very annoying, but Amadeus and I are huge fans of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and I just could not believe that we were actually getting to see them! I’d like to add about sixteen-hundred more exclamation points here, but I’m holding back for the sake of space, and to act sort of nonchalant about the whole event.  But Gillian Welch is whip-smart and lovely and her voice is as pure as a bar of Ivory soap. I’m in love with her lyrics; she crafts songs that often transport listeners to different eras and places, and introduces us to characters that we long to meet. She tells truths about the world, and they’re often bleak and harsh, though somehow hopeful. I’m equally enthralled by David Rawlings, her partner. He collaborates, harmonizes like a breeze through the trees and plays guitar like a man possessed. He’s fascinating to watch, and I’d have a mad crush on him except for the fact that I’m newly married and I still have a big crush on my husband. Besides, Dave and Gillian are partners in life as well as in the music world, and I want them to stay together forever and make 20 more CDs. They’re perfectly synchronized angels, those two. We bought The Harrow and the Harvest, their latest release, and listened to it non-stop from Arkansas to Tennessee, then back again, becoming more enthralled with every repeat. I know I’m gushing, but it’s such a gush-worthy CD. Our ears have been given a huge gift.

So there we were last Thursday, in section MF3, row V of the Ryman Auditorium. I looked very sporty in my sister’s $350 MICHAEL KORS LEATHER JACKET.  The Ryman is a dream venue for most musicians, and the acoustics are said to be second only to the Mormon Tabernacle. It’s a historic landmark,  a former church and home of the Grand Ole Opry. Being in that old building made me feel reverent about every song that ever featured a steel guitar and a twangy voice.

I can’t even talk about the concert, because I still haven’t shaken the stardust from my ears. Well, I have to talk about it just a little. The Harrow and the Harvest  is Ms. Welch’s first album in eight years, and the concert tour coincided with its release (it was just nominated for a Grammy, by the way).  There were just the two of them on that old stage, singing one dark, bleakly beautiful song after another. Topics included hard livin’, death, drug addiction and heartbreak. Somber subject matter, but the audience was joyful. The floors of the Ryman are wooden, and the whole building vibrated while we stomped our heels in time. I was really glad that I’d borrowed my sister’s spike-heeled leather boots in addition to the $350 MICHAEL KORS LEATHER JACKET, because they really made a swell racket.

I never wanted the evening to end, but of course it did, and we woke up early the next day and headed home. I popped the CD in once again, feeling all wistful and quiet. Gillian Welch’s lovely, plaintive voice filled the Honda and hit our hearts. We cranked it up on this one particular song, and it was as though I was hearing the lyrics for the very first time.

Take me and love me if you want me
Don’t ever treat me unkind
‘Cause I’ve had that trouble already
And it left me with a dark turn of mind.

Now I see the bones in the river
And I feel the wind through the pine
And I hear the shadows a-calling
To a girl with a dark turn of mind.

But oh, ain’t the nighttime so lovely to see?
And don’t all the nightbirds sing lovely?
You’ll never know how happy I’ll be
When the sun’s going down.

And leave me if I’m feeling too lonely
Full as the fruit on the vine
You know some girls are bright as the morning
Some girls have a dark turn of mind.

You know some girls are bright as the morning
Some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind.

I suddenly got the kind of clarity that can only come from a sleep deprived, three-day, thousand mile road trip. Gillian Welch makes millions of  people happy with her music. She’s unapologetically drawn to the sad, twisted, seamy side of the street. As of yet, I haven’t heard of one person smothering themselves with their own pillow while listening to The Harrow and the Harvest. I realized that I have tales that I need to tell, words I  have to write. They burn in my brain while I’m penning other things. And while some of them are happy and new pony shiny, some are horrific and heartbreaking and twisted and grim. It’s embedded in my DNA. It’s what I know. I have to stop editing myself, and I’ve got to stop worrying about my readers. It’s all about trust. Sitting there in the passenger seat, watching the trees and the rivers and the road kill, I suddenly felt blessed with a dark turn of mind.

Here’s a YouTube link to the song.