As you might know, given that I rarely shut up about it, I love to ride my bike over long distances. The common term for such travel is "touring." It's a popular and well-established mode of travel, but I didn't know about it when my brother and I planned our first tour in New England in 2015. We were looking for some kind of adventure, and I remember thinking, "Hey, what if we strapped our camping gear to our bikes?" I thought we'd invented something pretty special.
That trip—two weeks in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont—was an unforgettable journey, full of wild weather, spectacular vistas, quiet country lanes, and crazy serendipities. At the end of the trip, I had the feeling that I could have kept going indefinitely.
I put that idea to the test in 2018, when I rolled out of Seattle on April 22nd with no set itinerary or destination. I'd sold my car and given up all my steady gigs. That trip became a three-part, five-month journey, zigzagging my way down to Southern California. To say that the experience changed my life, while accurate, doesn't begin to capture the profound effect it had on me. What stays with me most of all—more than the landscapes I traveled through, the starry skies, the fish I caught, the meals I ate, or the calves of steel I'd built up by the end of that year—are all the connections I made with fellow wanderers. Most of those connections were enabled by music. There were countless jam sessions, in living rooms and back yards, on city streets and around campfires. Every time I broke out my mandolin in a public place, I met new people. I even played a handful of gigs along the way—always on short notice, since I never knew when I would be taking off for the next stretch of road.
Of course, "touring" has a different meaning among musicians. Musical tours are anything but spontaneous; they are usually planned months in advance. While the term doesn't specify a particular mode of travel, it evokes long days on the highway in a tour bus (if your band has money) or a van (if it doesn't). It's often synonymous with a whirlwind of shows, night after night, city after city, racing from one gig to the next, stopping only for gas and cheap food. It is a much-romanticized experience that, in reality, is often pretty discouraging.
I recently caught up with a high school classmate whose musical career has been truly impressive. He has toured the world with well-known acts, and played in some of the most prestigious venues in the country. Having followed some of these exploits on social media, I will admit that I often envied him. Seeing his success, I sometimes felt a painful longing—if only I'd made different choices when I was younger, maybe I could be living a life more like his. I never questioned my assumption that his musical path was fun and fulfilling. So I was surprised, and moved, when he told me the other day that the height of his success was also when he was at his most unhappy. Now, after years of therapy, he has chosen a different path. He quit his band, moved back to the Northwest to be with family, and is now playing the music he's truly passionate about. "I want to get back to that feeling I had when I was fourteen," he said, "when I played music just because it was fun."
Whether or not we're artists, and whether or not we've achieved mainstream success, at some point, most of us have to ask ourselves: in what ways have I been trying to change myself to fit some imagined ideal? How, and why, have I been straining to align my life with a received cultural story of what is best? Where do these stories come from anyway, and what hidden assumptions and values do they contain? What might it feel like to try something different? What would it mean, not to change myself to fit an unrealistic story, but to change my story to fit with what I know to be true in my soul?
In many ways, the latter is the scarier path. It comes with no map, no obvious progression. By definition, you're doing things your own way, and when you do things your own way, well, you're on your own. But it's also the more authentic path. When you're on it, you know it's right. I believe we all have an internal compass that can tell us when we're on a path of authenticity, and when we've strayed from it. Over the course of our lives, we have the opportunity to tune this instrument, and to learn to read it and trust it more readily.
That bike tour in 2018 was my first big experience of venturing into mapless terrain. I trusted my intuition and stayed true to my vision even when people cautioned me to revise my plans. (One person who is very dear to me implored me to travel by car instead of bike. I appreciated her concern, which I knew came from love. But I had to do it my way.) By the end of that year, I felt more authentically myself than ever.
I came back home energized and ready to make music. I pulled a band together, started booking gigs, finished a bunch of half-written songs, and began working on an album. It was an extremely productive period, but it was also a time when I lost my center. I had felt so alive out on the road; back in the city, working constantly, pushing my way towards a narrow idea of success, I strayed from my authentic self. I got carried away with self-promotion. I put too much focus on my social media presence, and relentlessly compared myself to other musicians.
Looking back at that time, I often feel embarrassed. Why the big rush? I still had this feeling that I was years behind, like I'd started my musical career years too late. In college, my friends and I had fantasized about being "the next Beatles." (We were incredibly stoned.) Now, I realized, I was nearly the age the Beatles were when they broke up. There was no time to waste! I failed to see that as soon as you compare yourself to someone else's story, or some archetype from pop culture mythology, you've already lost sight of yourself.
I got my album out just weeks before COVID-19 stopped all public music-making for a while. That spring four years ago marked the beginning of a years-long detour from the musical path I thought I was on in 2019. This detour brought me back to my love of writing, and took me to Oregon for two years of grad school. Now, it's deposited me here in Port Townsend, and I find myself making lots of music again, gigging and composing and recording with renewed energy. This time, though, I'm trying to be more patient. I'm trying to know less about where I'm headed. I'm trying to think less about my image, to compare myself less with others, and instead to trust in the music and its power to connect people. I'm trying to stay aware of my own tendencies to stray from the path of authenticity, and to keep asking myself questions like, Is this really what I want to be doing? Or is my inner compass pointing in some other direction?
People's actual stories are always stranger and more interesting than our cultural myths would make it seem. My path has been anything but straight and narrow. Like that bike tour in 2018, it's been much more of a gradual zig-zag, an intuitive ride full of unexpected detours, stops and starts, questions and reassessments. And just like with that trip, what has stayed with me more than anything else are the connections I've made with my fellow travelers.
For a few years now, I've wondered if I could apply the lessons I've learned from bike touring to that other, less satisfying kind of touring. I do love to travel and play music, I just don't love doing it the conventional way. I've been wondering: could I find a way to do it that feels more authentic and exciting? Instead of guzzling gas to crisscross the country in pursuit of musical fame, what if I just traveled around the region on my bicycle, performing in cafes, churches, and living rooms, staying with friends, and visiting the less-traveled byways of our fair Cascadia? Traveling light has its limitations, to be sure. I'd be limited to venues with pianos—but that's my preference anyway. I'd be slower in getting from place to place—but is that really such a bad thing?
I'm happy to say that this long-simmering idea has finally come to a boil. At the end of April, I'm going to set out for a short tour I'm calling "Jonas Myers Rides Again: The Spring 2024 Bicycle Tour." (More info forthcoming.) Now, a lot has changed since 2018, and I don't have the same desire to travel indefinitely. I love my life here in Port Townsend, and don't wish to be away from it for too long. So, to make this tour manageable in a short time-frame, I'm combining biking with another form of travel I love: trains! Thankfully, the Amtrak Cascades line allows walk-on bicycles.
This tour is just the latest experiment. We'll see what it reveals. I anticipate that I'll have fun, that I'll learn from my mistakes, and that I'll do it better next time. Staying on the unmapped path is a matter of constant adaptation and adjustment. It's a life driven by questions, not answers. It's scary and uncertain and so much better than the alternative.