DAVID HAERLE – EL CAMINO SIERRA – ABOUT THE SONGS
California Here We Come
My dad immigrated to Nashville from Germany in 1960. By 1968 he had a family and was a newly recovered alcoholic in need of a fresh start. That year he traveled to Los Angeles, arriving at a bus station downtown and walking up Sunset Boulevard to check into the low rent St. Moritz hotel in Hollywood. Eventually, he found a job, got his footing, and the following year returned to the South to get my mother, brother, and me. We rented a house in Silver Lake during a time when the Manson Family was still at large, so it was a scary first year for my mother when my dad was away. I was three years old when we arrived making L.A. my true home.
“California Here We Come” looks at the power of the Golden state to draw people from all over, looking to dream big or make a better life. California has its share of challenges to be sure, but in many ways its progressive streak sets a tone that influences the nation and the world. I’m drawn to the natural beauty of the mountains, the deserts, and the ocean. I love L.A.’s multi-cultural landscape.
The decision to put down roots in a place as vast and diverse as California may have to do with freedom, a job, climate, fortune, health, fame, or even needing a fresh start like my dad. It’s possible to find like-minded people and a place to call home. While the details of each person’s story are different, there is much we have in common. It’s the search for home that connects us all.
Electric Trucker
A dear friend of mine, Gregg Ginsburg, made a career change in 2020 and entered trucking school. I have known Gregg since my teens. He’s a talented musician and played drums in my formative early band Four Dudes Jammin’. He’s also 6’9” (and that’s before you add the trucker hat sitting high on his head).
I had a vision of Gregg commandeering one of the first “green” all electric 18 wheelers in the nation. A sailor on the open road. He’s on a mission to haul solar panels around the country without a trace of black diesel smoke. Gregg is looking for a fight and the fight is climate change. He rolls into a town and picks up some vegan “grub”, no red meat today, another small step to help ease carbon production in the world.
But some things don’t change. Gregg heads down the highways and byways of America blaring the music of Ernest Tubb, Merle Haggard, George Jones, and Buck Owens. With a thousand miles of range and runnin’ clean, he’s in your rearview mirror. He is the “Electric Trucker.”
Days In The Sun
I was remembering my trips to the beach as a teenager in Los Angeles, riding on the bus with my closest friends and girlfriends way before we could drive. We shared a thousand discoveries and daydreams lying on the sand as the waves crashed in. Getting older, we learn about limitations, and how some of our plans may not come to pass. Each chapter of life brings both loss and gains. Maybe our best approach is to embrace the hard-earned wisdom that comes with age, while retaining the childlike wonder of youth.
No More We
One Saturday morning in late summer of 2019, I saw several missed calls on my Facebook account. Then I saw a written message that will forever be etched in my mind: “Christian died this morning.”
My heart began racing. Christian, my big brother, was gone. The message came from one of his former roommates and by the time I read it, it was already a week old.
Christian was a bright star. He had lived and worked in Europe for over 17 years and ended up in London. Loved by many, he led an adventurous and colorful life. His brilliance inspired those who knew him.
I ran to tell my partner Erica about the message and began sobbing. Then I made the most difficult call of my life. I had to tell my mother her son had died.
My brother suffered from an addiction to alcohol and drugs. Unlike our parents, who both recovered from alcoholism, he never found a path out. He held impressive jobs and traveled the world but also crashed and hit some very low bottoms. Addictive behaviors strained and burned through friendships and family relationships. A few years ago, he was assaulted, sustaining a traumatic brain injury. All this took its toll. By the end he was a shell of the man he used to be.
The song “No More We” looks back on our childhood together and the summers spent at our grandparent’s farm in Tennessee. Experiencing the wonder of the world through the eyes of two young brothers before there was even a hint of the troubles that lay ahead. It’s saying goodbye to the brother I loved so much. We shared so many exhilarating memories. Now that he’s gone, I alone carry those memories. There is no more we.
Little Gordon
My partner Erica works in her design studio almost every day and wanted a companion to hang out with. Off to the pet store she went to find the perfect little goldfish. One of the employees happened to have a degree in marine biology and talked her through setting up the tank and how to care for her new buddy. That helpful employee’s name was Gordon, so naturally, now, the goldfish’s was too. It was such fun visiting Erica in the studio and seeing little Gordon happily swimming around.
A few weeks later, Erica discovered little Gordon had died in the night. We couldn’t figure out what happened. Erica seemed to be doing everything right.
She buried little Gordon in the rose garden in our yard, the same garden where she had placed some of the ashes of her late father.
This song goes out to all of us who have lost a beloved pet. Whether they were part of our lives for years or only briefly, like little Gordon, they touch our spirits.
Gilly
You meet someone by chance. A brief encounter. Unexpected. Suddenly you catch yourself thinking “Is this the person I’ve been waiting for?” It doesn’t make logical sense, but then again such feelings don’t always make sense.
But the person can’t stay or you can’t stay. Or they come and go from your life too fast to hold on to and you’re left with only questions about what could have been, what might have been. Gilly is a song for those who have had a brief encounter they can’t quite shake and the questions it left behind.
Springtime
Can we change in fundamental ways in this lifetime? To die and be re-born not in body, but in spirit? I think yes. I hope yes. We witness the seasons in nature: old life making way for new. Following that eternal rhythm of death and rebirth we can let go of old beliefs and allow the parts of ourselves that no longer serve us or others to fall away. We can decide to open the door and allow the sunlight to shine upon us. We can change.
Hey Paul
I hope everyone still knows their best friend from childhood. Paul and I met in grade school and spent our youth together running around the neighborhood on bikes and skateboards, playing in a band, meeting up at the Astro diner. Through good times, hard times, marriage, divorce, children, and the loss of loved ones, we watched the world we grew up in change. A good friend is a witness to your life. Friendship holds you steady. This song is a tribute to Paul and to best friends everywhere.
Train Down Memory Lane
There are times when I dream of a loved one no longer here. I wake up feeling such warmth and closeness to them I can’t quite believe they are still gone.
Sometimes I dream of a person I haven’t seen in many years and there’s a tremendous tug at my heart to reunite with them again.
“Train Down Memory Lane” grants the listener a ride back in time. Who would you want to see? Who would you talk to and what might be said? Is there something you’re still longing to say or words you’re longing to hear?
For me, it is my father who died suddenly when I was 24. He’s at my childhood home in the 1970s wearing the jean jacket he so often wore.
Then there are my grandparents. I spent every summer of my youth with them. They’re waiting at the airport in Nashville for me as I get off the plane from Los Angeles. I see the happiness on their faces and my own excitement as their open arms are waiting to hug me. These feelings and memories will stay with me always.
Do You Remember?
This song is inspired by my cherished friends and classmates at Campbell Hall School in Studio City in Los Angeles. We had an informal reunion a few years ago and it brought back all the beautiful crushes and friendships, the good times and inevitable pain involved with growing up, the hopes of youth.
The character in the song looks over his yearbook thinking of his first big romance and those indescribably heady feelings. He recalls the promises made that couldn’t be kept. Across town at the reunion, he laughs with the girls and boys, now men and women, who he started out with in life. Old stories are told, everyone catches up on each other’s lives, laughter is in the air, smiling faces are captured in the many photos taken. But at the end of the night, they each go their separate ways, just like after graduation. In looking back on his memories he realizes that, deep down, some hopes of youth live on forever.
Countdown I Got Liftoff
In “Countdown I Got Liftoff,” a teenage guitar player dreams of being a rock star only to get sidetracked by life until middle age when he regains his artistic footing. He imagines a late-in-life record deal, fantasizes about hitting a million streams, booking a world tour, all the things that are supposed to mean success. But in the end, it’s the process of creating that gives him the most fulfillment. In other words, this is a story partly about me.
One of the verses in “Countdown I Got Liftoff” is inspired by Neil Armstrong, who, to paraphrase, said that what brings a person satisfaction is when he or she knows they reached the limits of their capacity. I am a late bloomer, so when I brought making music back into my life I had a mission, a mission which I am still on, to find out what is the best I can do with the talent I was given.
True Liberty
When I wrote this song it was on the eve of the most important presidential election of my lifetime. Edwin Markham, (1852-1940), an American poet and the Poet Laureate of Oregon wrote:
“There is no true liberty for the individual, except as he finds it in the liberty of all. There is no true security for the individual, except as he finds it in the security of all.”
I believe these words to be profoundly true. True in his time, in our time, and for all time. His words form the chorus of “True Liberty.” I created a song that I hope supports the meaning of Mr. Markham’s deeply insightful statement.
Racial injustice and systemic racism fly in the face of liberty. Great disparities in wealth stemming from structural problems in our economy fly in the face of liberty. Fear of going bankrupt because of medical bills or disappearing jobs flies in the face of liberty. All this compounds into greater overall insecurity for many.
In that election of 2020, I cast my vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I believed their leadership and policies would bring about greater equality and a more level playing field for self-determination. I believed they would work to protect and provide more security to the most vulnerable Americans. In short, I believed they would bring us closer to a reality of liberty for all. I have not regretted my vote.
Thank you to our political leaders who are fighting for this liberty. Thank you, Mr. Markham, for inspiring this song.
Eddie
I love Van Halen. When I was 11 years old riding in the car with my dad, “Runnin’ With The Devil” came thundering across the airwaves. The song spoke to me. It starts off with the backwards blare of car horns and a thumping bassline followed by the sound of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar and the drums kicking in. Then comes that distinctive lead vocal and Van Halen’s trademark harmony. It was like a bomb went off in the rock world back in February 1978. I started playing guitar not long after that on a Fender Stratocaster and amplifier gifted to me by my parents.
I saw Van Halen perform live at what was then the LA Sports Arena. Eddie with that grin! The only problem with seeing guitar played that well is it leaves you thinking, “where can anyone go from here?” Once I made peace with the fact there’s only one Eddie Van Halen, I let his greatness inspire me to explore my own style of creativity.
When he died in the fall of 2020, it hit me hard. The LA Times ran Eddie’s obituary on the front page of the print edition. Eddie deserved that. I cried like a baby reading it. His and the band’s music had been such a big part of my life: the soundtrack to my formative years.
“Eddie” is a thank you to the man who performed miracles on six strings. And always with a smile.
Sunday Morning
Wake up and follow your heart. Give yourself the time and space to act on a whim: take a stroll down memory lane, daydream, hike into the hills, whatever you want. I don’t think we can directly control when a wave of gratitude or joy will sweep into our life, but I think we can cultivate gratitude, and do things that invite joy to pay us a visit.
Finding Natalie (Reprised)
While making my very first album, I attended an alumni reunion for The Pilgrim School in Los Angeles. I was a student there from kindergarten through third grade. At the reception, I flipped through a stack of old yearbooks looking for my first love, Natalie. Sure enough, there was she was, smiling at me from all the old photos. I started imagining what it would be like to find her again to tell her what she meant to me. I was too young and too afraid of my feelings back then to say anything. She didn’t come to the reunion, but the phrase “Finding Natalie” stuck with me.
The original recording (which opens my first album, Garden of Edendale) has a joyful feeling to the music. But slowing down the tempo and lowering the key in this new version made the song more intimate. To borrow words used by filmmaker Michael Pottle, who directed the music video for this recording, I think this version conveys both the sweetness and the sadness of the tale.
I hope Finding Natalie (Reprised) encourages listeners to be bold and not hesitate to tell the people they love just how much they mean to them. Our most intense experiences don’t always turn out like we hoped, but they inspire us and hand us powerful lessons that can stay with us for the rest of our lives.
All That Will Never Be
Many of the verses in “All That Will Never Be,” lament the things in a life you wish you’d done differently: all the untapped potential, things you might have done or said, choices you didn’t make. There’s an important idea I learned from Jonathan Grayson, the facilitator of the OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) support group I am a member of. He says we tend to idealize that “other” life we might have had. We don’t often consider how things could have been worse or more difficult had we chosen—or if life had placed us on—a different path. He also says that success is not about making the best decisions, but rather coping with consequences of the decisions one has made.
I think it’s probably human nature to at times drift into regret and “might have been’s” and “if only’s.” But best not to dwell on them too long. At its conclusion, “All That Will Never Be” suggests that any calendar or clock can remind us of the most precious time in our lives: today and now.