My Life In 35 Songs, Track 26: “Song for the Road” by David Ford

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Now I don’t lightly use words like ‘forever,’ but I will love you ‘til the end of today…

Do teenagers today still make mixtapes?

I’m using that term loosely, mind you. I know there can’t be more than a few living souls on the planet who still go through the painstaking steps of cobbling together handmade cassette tape compilations to tell their crushes how they feel. Hell, I can’t even say that I’ve ever made a true mixtape, in that classic analog sense. But I came of age long enough before the streaming era that I still experienced the sensation of trading music in physical formats – usually on burned CDs, though occasionally via USB thumb drives, and sometimes even by way of data DVDs.

Does the mixtape live on in any form today? Is it a Spotify link? A YouTube playlist? A collection of TikTok videos? I ask because “Song for the Road” by David Ford is a classic, all-timer mixtape song, and I wonder if classic, all-timer mixtape songs can even still exist anymore.

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of the mixtape. In a lot of ways, this entire series is just an ambitious, life-spanning, 35-song mixtape. It doesn’t hurt that three of my four favorite artists of all time – Butch Walker, Andrew McMahon, and Jimmy Eat World – have all written songs about mixtapes. “You gave me the best mixtape I have” Butch sings in his, before adding “And even all the bad songs ain’t so bad.” “This is my mixed tape for her; it’s like I wrote every note with my own fingers,” goes the punchline of “The Mixed Tape,” the first-ever single from Andrew McMahon’s Jack’s Mannequin project; and in the Jimmy Eat World song, the note is pure regret: “Maybe we could put your tape back on/Rewind until the moment we went wrong.”

A great mixtape is more powerful than any love letter can ever be. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the right song might as well be worth a million. When you’re crushing on someone, or missing someone, or teetering on the edge of full-on romantic love for someone, there are no words you can write down on a page that could possibly convey the full depths of what you’re feeling. You can’t say it, but maybe your favorite band can. Or better yet, a small army of your favorite bands. Such is the incredible utility of the mixtape. Or mixed tape, if you prefer Andrew McMahon’s lingo.

I knew from the moment I started to develop romantic feelings for members of the opposite sex that the mixtape was going to be an important tool in my arsenal. From middle school crushes all the way up to my marriage, I have made a lot of mixtapes in my life. When I made a mixtape for my high school girlfriend, she had no problem telling me that she did not like the way the emo/pop-punk boys sang; I knew right then that we weren’t meant to be.

It sounds shallow, but I swear it’s not: My search for “The One” always included a musical component. As in, if she and I were on completely different wavelengths musically, we were probably not the right fit for one another. I loved music so much that I couldn’t imagine not being able to share it with my person, whoever she turned out to be. In that way, the sneaky importance of the mixtape was that, in addition to being a way to communicate deep, yearning desire, it was also a handy barometer for determining just how much musical compatibility you had with another person.

Which brings me to the point in my life where I found my true mixtape mate. Long before Jillian and I started dating in the summer of 2010, I clocked the fact that we had a lot of musical overlap. She had a habit for naming Facebook photo albums after song titles. Once, she’d cataloged the holiday season with three separate albums, one called “A Long December,” the second titled “And There’s Reason to Believe,” and the third dubbed “Maybe This Year Will Be Better Than the Last.” And once, at her house during a gathering with friends, I heard deep cuts by the likes of Iron & Wine and Jack’s Mannequin on her playlist. I was, in a word, intrigued.

When we began spending more time together that first summer, even before we started dating, we agreed to make one another mix CDs of songs we loved. I turned her on to Butch Walker and Bruce Springsteen (because of course); she clued me in to under-the-radar singer-songwriters like Robert Francis (a sublime nighttime driving song called “Junebug”) and Matt Hires (lovely little love songs like “You in the End” and “You Are the One”). She always teases me about being slow to make the first move that summer, but looking back at the first mixtape I made her, I can’t believe how obvious I was being: Springsteen’s “Secret Garden”; U2’s “All I Want Is You”; John Mayer’s “Edge of Desire”; Black Lab’s “Weightless.” These are all incredibly lovelorn songs, and most of them are more than a little bit sensual. I was clearly leaning on the mixtape to say everything I wasn’t ready to say out loud.

Those first mix CDs – two from her to me, two from me to her – ended up forming the backbone of the soundtrack for the first summer we spent together. They were just the start of a long musical journey we took together. I have a playlist on iTunes that includes every song either of us ever put on a mix for the other, sequenced in the order in which the CDs were traded; it includes 1,138 songs. Scrolling through that playlist is like flipping through a photo album. There are mixes that are completely lovelorn and mixes that carry the loneliness of our long-distance days. There are mixes for wintertime and mixes for summer. There are mixes that were traded for Valentine’s Days, birthdays, Christmases. There’s one I gave to her the day she graduated, and another I gave to her the day we got married.

Of all those mixtapes, though, the most important is the one she gave me the day I left for college at the end of our first summer together. I’ve already written about that departure and how much it hurt, how much it scared me. I’d never tried the long-distance relationship thing before, and I wasn’t sure what kind of challenges it might bring. Looking back, it’s obvious to me that we were both committed to making it work. Driving away that day, though, the uncertainty got to me.

I didn’t listen to the mixtape on the drive to school, because I didn’t want to be openly weeping on the highway. Instead, I saved it for later that night, when I had checked into my new dorm room and finally had some time to myself. Then, I unwrapped the mixtape, and the letter Jillian had written to go with it. I pressed play on the CD (the first four songs: “Song for No One” by Ian Broudie, “I’d Rather Be With You” by Joshua Radin, “Hey Jealousy” by Gin Blossoms,” and “You and I” by Ingrid Michaelson) and I started to read.

What struck me, reading the letter, is how certain she seemed about us. I’d let the sadness of our parting make me question how long we could last without seeing each other every day. I’d heard so much about long-distance relationships being impossible, and I’d never had a relationship that had lasted more than three months anyway. What chance did I have? But Jillian’s letter exuded so much confidence in us, and that confidence was infectious.

“I wish that summer and kissing in the bay and you getting so much tanner than me (mean) could last forever,” she wrote. “But since it can’t, I look forward to playing in the leaves with you (yes, we’re doing that) and getting caught by the cops sledding (it’s tradition) and watching the snow finally melt away in the ‘spring’ all until it’s summer again.”

I think I read that letter two or three times in a row, just because I missed her so much and it was so reassuring to know that she, like I, was in it for the long haul. At some point, I became cognizant of the music playing in the background. I tuned in for track five, a piano ballad called “Song for the Road.”

“And I just can’t wait to see you on Sunday/Far from the traffic and the smoke and the noise/But for this evening I will play back every message that you sent/So I can sleep to the sound of your voice.”

So goes the fourth verse of “Song for the Road,” a song that is just six verses long, without a chorus. On that night, winding down for the bed on my first of many days apart from the person I’d decided I was in love with, that verse felt like such a comfort. I wasn’t playing back messages, but I was reading back the letter she’d sent, and I knew the words would be circling around in my head all night, hopefully calming some of the loneliness.

That fall, as Jillian and I drove back and forth between our respective college towns to visit one another, “Song for the Road” became something like our theme song. It wasn’t our only mixtape song that felt appropriate for our long-distance situation, but it was the one that seemed to have the most clear-eyed, optimistic view of this whole situation. I remember one particular Sunday, where we kissed goodbye with tears in our eyes, really, really not wanting to go back to our normal weekday lives. Once she’d driven off, I went back up to my dorm room and played “Song for the Road” on repeat, and this time, the second-to-last verse struck me:

“Now I don’t lightly use words like ‘forever’/But I will love you till the end of today/And in the morning when I remember everything that you are/Well, I know I’ll fall for you over again.”

I was already feeling, even then, even just a couple of months in, that we might be one another’s endgame.

Now, let’s fast-forward.

It’s July 2014. It’s been four years, almost to the day, since our first kiss, and about three years and 10 months since those first days of our long-distance relationship. “Song for the Road” is playing again, only this time, it’s not in a car, and it’s not in a dorm room. This time, it’s playing over the speakers in a big, beautiful hall, packed with dozens of our closest friends and relatives, as the two of us twirl around a dance floor as one. I’m wearing a tuxedo; she’s in a beautiful white dress. We are, for the first time ever, sharing a dance as husband and wife. And this time, as the song reaches its conclusion, as I dip her back and kiss her, it’s the last verse that hits me.

“Now, I know someday, this all will be over/And it’s hard to say what most will I miss/Just give me one way to spend my last moments alive/And I choose this, I choose this, I choose this.”

Past Installments:

• Track 1: “One Headlight” by The Wallflowers
• Track 2: “Hanging by a Moment” by Lifehouse
• Track 3: “Hide” by Creed
• Track 4: “Wheel” by John Mayer
• Track 5: “Kill” by Jimmy Eat World
• Track 6: “Fix You” by Coldplay
• Track 7: “Walk On” by U2
• Track 8: “Feeling a Moment” by Feeder
• Track 9: “When Canyons Ruled the City” by Butch Walker
• Track 10: “Truth Is” by Sister Hazel
• Track 11: “Breaking Free” from High School Musical
• Track 12: “Come Around” by Counting Crows
• Track 13: “Someone Like You” by SafetySuit
• Track 14: “Crashin’” by Jack’s Mannequin
• Track 15: “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen
• Track 16: “Go” by Boys Like Girls
• Track 17: “Ride” by Cary Brothers
• Track 18: “Growing Up” by The Maine
• Track 19: “Dusk and Summer” by Dashboard Confessional
• Track 20: “The Sound of You and Me” by Yellowcard
• Track 21: “Holocene” by Bon Iver
• Track 22: “Handwritten” by The Gaslight Anthem
• Track 23: “Can’t Smile Without You” by Barry Manilow
• Track 24: “The House That Heaven Built” by Japandroids
• Track 25: “Miles Apart” by The Dangerous Summer

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