Almost tried to tell this whimsical dream/music/childrearing story on the last @wethefifth Patreon episode, but it was too boring and I was too, ah, sleepy. But! That’s why we have Twitter. So, here’s how @KenLayne unknowingly turned my 5-year-old into a @JasonIsbell fan.

Do you know how your dream-brain has weird augmented/invented geographies that you keep coming back to? And also, how you keep some musical acts at bay that you just KNOW you will eventually like once you actually listen to them? So these intersected for me a few nights back.

Through no fault of his own, one of the places my dream-brain keeps returning me to is this very nice, Sunset-magazine style 2-story, Sedona-looking flagstone-and-big-windows place in a flat empty desert that @KenLayne supposedly lives in. (He has never lived in any such house.)

Imagine this, only with more window and less stone, more shaped like the Elvis/Priscilla Palm Springs house, and no driveway/courtyard situation, just flat desert, scrub, rocks, sand…and no neighbors.

The important thing about this imaginary compound, which I visit every month or so, is that the geography is mutable, magical: South over the mountains from Palm Springs, east in Arizona through the weird red rocks, just past the “reservoir” near San Diego. Outside of Vegas, etc.

I never really go *inside* the fancy house, but as you’d expect, Layne has some good solid pic-a-nic benches in the sand & scrub, plus outdoor fire-rings for conversatin’. There, on a recent night, was none other than @JasonIsbell. I immediately felt embarrassed and apologetic.

Why? Because Jason for a while now has been THAT musical act: The one that people I respect like a lot, & I can tell by the descriptions that I will, too. I enjoy him as a Twitter follow. And yet I have never heard a single song. Fountains of Wayne used to be that; now it’s him.

As you can imagine, this had me feeling self-conscious sitting across from him on Ken Layne’s desert picnic bench. So I stammered, filibustered, made a fool of myself. It scrambled the plans of whatever possibly criminal scheme we were all cooking up around the campfire.

Woke up, went downstairs, hung out with the 5-year-old, asked her what music she wanted to listen to, she shrugs. So, with a pang of leftover dream-guilt, I said: “Hey Alexa, shuffle songs by Jason Isbell!”

And of course, I liked it!

More importantly, the 5-year-old, who has a very specific and idiosyncratic taste in music (pro-Beatles, pro-“Underwear Frog,” pro- @sheandhim, pro-Arianna Grande), started pricking up her ears and glancing at the music-box at key moments. Had never done that with, say, Beck.

This is the song that sealed the deal. To be clear — I’m just reading on the couch, not responding to the music, at all. She’s coloring or playing. And by halfway through the first listen, she’s singing the chorus: “Tired of traveling alone…”

This is her tonight, uncoached.

This is now what we sing together when we walk through the neighborhood. And having just learned it on guitar—Jason, dude, why the capo? (There's obviously some music thing I don't grasp.)

Twin moral of the story: 1) Always fill up with extra gas before the San Diego reservoir so you can make it all the way to Ken Layne’s imaginary desert compound east of the Colorado River. And 2) don’t delay listening to music you know you’ll like!