It's a long road home tonight

OK, for cryin' out loud. I couldn't wait until tomorrow to talk about the music.

I'm just that excited!

So, here's the scoop...

By the time I met Dana, he had been writing and playing guitar for several years. The extensive list of bands he and his brother, Jesse, started included the likes of Victor Bonehead and The Cabbage Demons (love that name).

He wrote that riff during his teenage years with Jesse. The first time I heard him play that riff, I knew it belonged to something special. I didn't know what, but I carefully guarded that riff like a mother hen from all of the other bandmates and musicians we'd met over the past 16 years we've been together.

Something in the back of my mind told me that riff was a piece to the puzzle surrounding Heather.

Fast forward to fall 2008.

Diligently into my craft. My eyes on the prize now moreso than ever. I will tell Heather's story. I will tell it through words in a novel and through music on a soundtrack. (And here.)

I'd been assigned to shoot video at football games in remote locations of Northeast Nebraska and while driving to Pender --nearly an hour from my hometown -- a phrase popped into my head:

"Well, it's a long road home tonight."

Not only did the phrase fit my Friday night football frenzy, it came with a melody and it reflected Heather's plight.

And that melody stuck in my head for weeks. At night, it crawled into my ears and multiplied until full verses and pre-choruses attached to it and an entire song manifested.

But there was a problem: You know that saying about there's many a slip twixt the cup and the hip? Yeah, I don't know what it means either, but I think it might fit with my frustration when it comes to writing music.

I have a difficult time getting my point across to Dana when it comes to music. I can sing, but I can't play the accompaniment I hear in my head.

But on Saturday, that last piece of Heather's puzzle snapped itself into place and the picture that emerged painted imagery that tendered to me the tenacity to finish the job.

That riff -- the one I've been saving and protecting like a mother hen -- fit perfectly beneath the verses of this song. And my worries that it wouldn't fit together with the chorus that had been nagging at me slipped away when Dana automatically transitioned the song to what I heard.

Talk about magic. We worked on recording it with his 64-track recorder from early yesterday afternoon until late in the night. I need to make some phone calls to find a studio drummer, but I'm hoping to shoot a video and be able to post the song within the next six weeks.

Words cannot express how exciting this adventure continues to be for me. Wow!