This month’s free download from Love & Honesty is “Devil A Ride“…
Somewhere outside Las Vegas, heading south on I-15, there’s a sign that reads “Prison Area – Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.”
Mister and I were driving to Vegas from Denver. It had been a long day, and the last shift behind the wheel belonged to me. We passed that sign and the creative gears started spinning. The freeway became a dusty, desolate desert road. Our modern auto became an old, beat-up Plymouth. With fins. AM radio. No a/c.
It was a visual experience, and the soundtrack was immediate: “Sign says, ‘No Hitchhiking,’ but you don’t pay it any heed…”
I asked Mister to grab my notebook and write down some lines for me. He found an envelope. It would have to do. And it did.
It’s hard for me to tell you how much I care for this song. Maybe it’s because I’d had the line “If you give the devil a ride, you can be damn sure he’s gonna wanna drive” in my back pocket for a few years. Maybe it’s because the writing was such a visual experience. Maybe it’s because it was the first recording I ever produced solo.
Whatever the reason, I love this song. It’s dark. It’s sticky. It’s ominous. And it’s true. We can’t give control to someone we don’t trust, then expect to wrest that power back. Life doesn’t work that way. We need to trust our instincts. Our guts. Always.
Once, a few years before writing this song, my old car was acting up and in need of a specific part. It was still running, but I had a mechanic looking for that part as it wasn’t gonna hold much longer. Anyway, I had just parked the old gal at Starbucks and was walking in when a handsome, well-dressed dude approached me. He said he liked my car and asked the usual questions (year, miles, etc.). He then told me he had an old car like mine up on blocks, that he used for selling parts. He said I should give him my number, so that he could check in, in case I ever needed something. I said I was switching phones (yeah, right), and that I’d happily take his number. He pulled out a card and gave it to me, and he shook my hand in the process. Friends, it was a “Dead Zone” moment: during the shaking of his hand, I felt extreme darkness and fear in the very center of my body. He let go of my hand, smiled and walked away.
I turned and went into the store and immediately tossed his card in the nearest garbage bin. On that day, the devil walked.