We were somewhere in the Mojave, between Ludlow and Needles, when the
drugs began to take hold.
That’s the start, anyway, of this #blessed adventure, packed Cadillac
El Dorado convertible kicking up dust on the California highway, top down, blue
sky blazing in unbearable vividness. Andrew Weathers does a similar thing, but
with music instead of a car, capturing the hot, arid California of romantic
imagination. His sparse guitar plucks are each individual breath you inhale,
heating your chest in the daytime and freezing it at night. The more you drive,
the deeper the landscape and the music penetrate you until you perceive them as
one. The landscape has particularly inspired Weathers, as Mojave is “a love letter of sorts to a particular hill in the midst
of the Mojave Desert’s expansive wastes.” It’s also part of Full Spectrum’s
Editions Littlefield series, “which explores notions of intentional communities
and progressive living.” There is nothing more progressive or “living” than
baking under the sun or gazing up at the stars from a wilderness locale, where
you can experience the beauty and the harshness all at the same time. Must stop
here – this is bat country.
Weathers handles an array of instruments on this release, combining
guitar, banjo, synth, organ, and other sundry items for an improvisational
tour-de-folk, tunes light enough to be blown away like tumbleweed on the desert
breeze. That charming highway strip bisects pure distance, and the tracks of Mojave empty into the atmosphere to fill
the space. Breathe again, what’s on the wind enters not only your mouth and
nose, but your ears and eyes as well for complete sensory engagement. It takes
you places – even sitting here at my desk, I’m wandering through wastelands in
my head, unable to separate my imagination from Andrew Weathers’s compositions.
I welcome the hitchhikers I come across while on my sojourn, because they’re
people too, and I’m not afraid of them or their intentions even if sometimes
they do look like a tripped-out, blond Tobey Maguire. That’s just part of the
free association, not remotely meaningful. Just inhabiting, yeah, this
particular segment of three-dimensional space. Nothing but the music and the
scenery to keep me company, to comfort and confound me with equal measure.
Gonna get lost in it here.
What drugs? I’m high on life,
man.
--Ryan Masteller
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