The Grahams don’t write songs, they share experiences. After cruising the Mississippi on a riverboat and riding the American railways, they quite literally hit the road.
With a camera crew in tow, The duo of Alyssa and Doug Graham jumped on a motorcycle and headed out to explore legendary US Highway 66. Seems kinda idyllic, right? In some ways it is but it’s also a highway lost in time, filled with characters as colorful as the towns that mark its path. The resulting travelogue shines its brightest light on the people they encounter on their journey, letting them bring the highway to life with their stories and reflections.
Then, of course, there are the songs. While Riverman‘s Daughter was rootsy and reflective of it’s beginnings in the Mississippi mud and Glory Bound channeled Woody Guthrie and a generation of train-hoppers, Kids Like Us has a more, well, free-wheeling rock flair mixed with a retro 1960’s pop vibe.
The Grahams have been sharing video tales from their journey over the past several weeks but now bring them together as the documentary “Searching the Milky Way”. Twangville is honored to premiere it for your viewing – and listening – enjoyment.
Did you ever wake up one day, decide to learn how to ride a death machine in two days, proceed to take it across the country on the most bizarre and tripped out “highway” in the world, during perhaps the most tumultuous and freighting moment in American history? We did.
To be fair we were looking for an adventure to inspire and help write our third record, that was part of a trilogy we started in 2013. Secretly, we were also watching a lot of The Sons Of Anarchy and had just obsessed about Easy Rider. Little did we know the journey we were about to take during the 2016 election season was Indeed stranger than fiction.
Two kids from the Jersey suburbs on a 6-week motorcycle ride across nothing short of the “twilight zone” of America. The people are odd, the motels are creepy, the road is forgotten, and the racists are plenty. For some, of course, this is simply home and for others this is a chance to see nostalgic America. For us, this was an eye-opening glimpse of America’s “heyday” in ruins. Yes, this was once the road to the land of milk and honey but let us not forget this road also represents a time that wasn’t so great, which is clearly emblazoned on several marquee’s along the route boasting, “American Owned”.
Maybe we were the oddballs or the freaks, but we certainly found ourselves smack dab in the middle of a time warp. An America that was at once intriguing and mysterious yet unwelcoming and oblivious. Ultimately, the journey led to a lot of great new music, a fun and captivating documentary, and a renewed appreciation for progressive ideology.
~The Grahams
About the author: Mild-mannered corporate executive by day, excitable Twangville denizen by night.