This picture of the International Harvester Scout II is the exact truck make model and UT hook ‘em horns colors that made my road life my home until it broke down in the heat of West Texas… another story another time. For now, it’s Dylan time with a nod to the music director and bassist of the time Rob Stoner… I have to admit that Hard Rain LP changed the trajectory of my life. I was a Freshman at FIT (Florida Institute of Tech) studying aquaculture wanting to save the earth through managing the ecology by limiting pollution and increasing food production by utilizing the vast oceans and their potential bounty. I moved on bc my socialist sister recent graduate UofW Madison came to visit me (Oh Sister) and demanded, "Listen to Dylan's Hard Rain and go on the road!" and I did over and over while I was studying for exams and my South African (left wing to my right wing on the soccer team-we were both Radical as he used to say) was planning to steal my IH Scout II truck and go without me so I went, and the rest is history. Of course, I should have become a scientist and helped out but being a musician lawyer actor writer? near-do-well has suited my personality way better but the earth has suffered as I've been more selfish and less shellfish. I played Room to Move in the F.I.T. Rathskeller talent show with a Jamaican Rasta Underwater Arc Welder on my acoustic Yamaha I gave him before I left. He said, “Free shit is always cool mon!.” When I ran into a gal from the school that next summer at a random gig in Tom’s River, NJ she told me we were in the yearbook as the highlight of that show. Weird connections to and fro the east and west coast up and down and all around. Just like that blazing solo of Mayall’s in that iconic harp tune to the adoring crowd my musical life had begun, my truck was my means of getting there wherever there was.
Cross Country - FLA to LA in my IH Scout II - Meeting John Mayall's "Turning Point" band @ the Golden Bear Huntington Beach CA