Towpath Road

This one I wrote as an ode to Tony Rice. After Tony’s passing in 2020, I had the image in my mind of looking down an old towpath road and seeing Tony through the mist, guitar case in hand, as he turned back and smiled and then disappeared. I wanted to convey the loss but also the release. Tony dedicated his life to a pursuit of something that many would consider archaic, the folk tradition, acoustic music, bluegrass, jazz. He was unable to truly perform and sing in the last 20 or so years of his life, something that I think about often. Just like the towpath roads of the east where I grew up, there is a great sadness to see the past and people of that time fading, yet there is also something freeing as those paths return to the land, to become overgrown, untravellable and thus even more mysterious and lyrical in the process.