The weekend before last, I went on a road trip with my dad and brother and I didn’t plan a single bit of it. I didn’t drive a single mile, make a single decision or check a single map, and it was glorious.
The whole weekend was a whirlwind of performances. Thursday night we saw West Side Story at Interlochen. Friday night we were in Fishers, Indiana for Billy Strings. Saturday, Ford Field in Detroit for Chris Stapleton. Sunday, back home for the new Spider-Man movie. Four nights, four completely different flavors of story telling, and I didn’t plan a single one of them.
That was kind of the point, I was a passenger all weekend. In a literal sense, riding in the back seat while my dad handled the driving and my brother played DJ, but also in a larger sense as well. I let them lead me somewhere I hadn’t been before - the world of Billy Strings, and by extension the Grateful Dead and jam band scene my dad and brother have lived in for years. I’ve been a Billy fan for a while now and a Dead appreciator from a distance, but I’d never actually stepped foot into that culture, the pit, the dancing, the strangers who feel like friends by the second song. This time, they finally brought me in.
