Story Behind The Song

In the middle of July 2016, I rode my Indian Chief Classic through the Mojave Desert from Barstow, California, to Kingman, Arizona, starting at 1 in the afternoon, the middle of the day in the middle of summer. My motorcycle thermometer maxed out at 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was reported the surface temperature of the road was over 140. I had blisters on my fingers which were facing the road, not the sun. During the ride, the sun was beating down on me, and the full moon was visible in front of me. The more brutal the heat became, the more I just wanted to stop and sleep. That was a bad idea, death for certain, and I knew it. I started singing to myself. I was in a true present - a place where all of us should be but rarely get to. A couple of people asked me about the opening line, White lines run through me. One friend asked, Dude, are you doing blow? Not a chance, and I have zero desire for it. The opening line is a reference to the white lines of the road. As the heat intensified, everything started blending - the sun's reflection off my gas tank, the moon in front of me, and the endless charred dessert. The white lines of the road passed through my body as I started a deep introspection of where I was at in the world. At that point in my life, I was in purgatory, and I began addressing the core of my beliefs. The heat had me spinning deep into myself. A friend had died on that very stretch of highway, and I thought death could happen anywhere at any time. The way I was feeling at that moment (onset of heat exhaustion), I felt now was as good a time as any. That little thought had an aftershock akin to being slapped in the face. Inside the sleepiness, hallucinations, and burning from the blast furnace I was in, it occurred to me that I wanted to feel things again. The song is a poem - a slice of time under both the sun and moon of the Mojave Desert - a point of being honest with one's self.