It’s easy to set up, a blast to host, and a memorable and fun experience to boot.

Interested in hosting a house concert? Send an email to info@drewkennedymusic.com to get started!

The album is also now available at itunes, Amazon mp3, Napster, eMusic, and Rhapsody!

Thanks to all of you for buying An Audio Guide To Cross Country Travel so far– I hope you enjoy what I’ve worked so hard to put together.

Also, the reviews are starting to trickle it– click on the reviews tab above to see what the fine folks of the interwebs are saying about the record.

It’s Here! An Audio Guide To Cross Country Travel is now available for downloading. I’m excited, and I hope that you are as well! To get it, click on the STORE section above… after a few clicks, sit back and enjoy! Or, if you’d rather order the physical cd, you can do that too. I’ve worked really hard on this album, and I hope it means as much to you as it does to me. I’m already hard at work on songs for the next one… but until then, ENJOY!…
Make sure you opt into the mailing list if you want to get a chance to win a free HOUSE CONCERT!!. After the first week of sales, we’ll randomly select one lucky winner and contact them via email to figure out all of the details.

Thanks to all of you for your love and support! Please know that each and every one of you are the biggest reasons why I believe in what I do. Making music is a family affair– from me, to my wife Holly, who made the original artwork for the record, to all of you, our extended family who love and support music as much as we do– I’m glad I get to share this next big step in my life with all of you.

So, in short– THANKS!!

I hope to be sitting in your living room, sharing an evening of music and friendship with you in the near future!

There it is, ladies and gentleman!

An Audio Guide To Cross Country Travel.

I know, I know, it’s a strange title… but strangely, I think it fits.

So, for your approval, I submit the record in its entirety. Click on that funny looking blue strip at the bottom of the page, sit back, and enjoy. If the spirit should move you, don’t hesitate to leave me a comment. I’d love to hear what you think about it. Any ideas for a single? Let us know. We haven’t made up our mind yet, and we’d love to have you help us decide. Hate it? Let us know that, too (though I hope with all of my being that you don’t!).

Soon (very soon!) you’ll be able to download the record from this very website… and then itunes (and it’s other less memorably named competitors)… and then you’ll be able to come and buy the album at a show. In the next several months, we’ll release a single to radio and the physical cd will be available for purchase in our online store.

I realize that this is a bit unorthodox… but that’s why I like it.

So sit down, make yourself comfortable, give the album a good spin. Help us decide what the single should be. Leave me a comment with your thoughts. I’m all ears!

If you like it, buy it! Come see a show!

If you don’t like it, then at least you got to hear the whole thing before you decided if you wanted to spend your hard earned money on my hard earned business.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy the recorded version of the musical journey my life has been on over the past two years!

dk

I find myself enjoying the order of the morning– darkness rising slowly to some sort of unfamiliar tint of color in the sky (a color unknown to sunsets), rising faster now to the color of an overcast afternoon, rising even faster to the first burst of sunshine as it dashes across the sky. Currently, we’re in the overcast afternoon portion of the morning. I’m waiting for the dash. Once it arrives, I will know that my morning is over. I have things to do, and I won’t be able to enjoy coffee or rub the sleep from my eyes carefree. My dad figured this out a long time ago, and told me that one day I’d figure it out, too. Once the sun is up, there are things to do that you have to do.

But the rain is still here. Perhaps the sun won’t be joining us today…

Maybe I’ll cross “Tuesday” off of the top of my list and write “Wednesday.”

Maybe I’ll go back to bed. Maybe I’ll…

Oh, there it is. It was a little late I guess. Now it’s official.

Good morning.

————-

I’ll have some new album news for you shortly. Thank you for being patient with me!

-Kris Kristofferson

I spend a lot of time piloting a large 15 passenger van around the country for my job. It’s anonymously white, and my friends enjoy making fun of me for it.

“It’s a child molester van,” they say.

This kind of comment never fails in putting me on the defensive.

“It couldn’t be a child molester van,” I say, “it has windows.”

Such a response makes me feel as if I’m defending the van, and not myself. It’s been a good van, and it has handled its share of the workload without question or concern. It deserves respect, yet it almost always ends up on the receiving end of their stinging laughter. It’s a thankless job, being a fuel inefficient, boringly colored hunk of steel and rubber filled to the brim with stale smelling gear and cranky musicians. Often criticized and rarely praised, it somehow manages to retain a stiff upper lip when up against such unfair social stigmatism.

Playing music for a living can feel exactly like that sometimes.

The life of a musician has always required a massive amount of travel, and unless you’re one of those sheltered, financially comfortable musicians (whom I despise at 3 in the morning during a 4 hour drive, yet whom I constantly wish to be) sleeping in a fluffy bed in the back of a tour bus, the 15 passenger van is most likely your vehicle of choice. It’s not flashy, but it gets the job done.

The roads we travel all look the same— with their black asphalt backs and yellow spines baking underneath an unforgiving sun—and over time, even the landscape surrounding these well worn paths begin to look identical. Traveling down a trail of monotony can make a four-hour journey seem like it takes eight… Believe me when I tell you that it can suck the very soul from your being. This isn’t something that concerns me greatly—I usually have new music to listen to or interesting fodder for conversation to save me from boredom—but I worry about my van. To keep it from revolting against the duties it willfully undertakes with the asking of a key, and at the sacrifice of 30 or 40 minutes, I try to lead it down new and unfamiliar roads from time to time. I don’t like things in my life to get stagnant, and I assume the van doesn’t either.

I’m kidding myself, of course, since the van could probably care less. While it’s a highly evolved piece of machinery, I doubt it’s been able to put together many emotions at this point in its fossil fueled life, let alone the ability to reason and thus prefer one road over another.

This willful diversion off of a direct route between points A and B most often occurs when I’m searching for inspiration. A song can be found in the most unexpected of places and I occasionally try to expedite the writing process by putting myself in an unfamiliar setting. Once in a while this exercise will yield a little fleck of mental gold that I can mine for ideas. More often than not it simply gives me an excuse to get off of the interstate. Either way, I’m usually willing to ditch 30 minutes of a day on the road if the possibility of adventure exists.

You can take several different routes to San Angelo from Austin. The route that I had chosen on this particular day took me through Marble Falls, Llano, Brady, Eden, and then finally to San Angelo. I had traveled this way several times before, so my mind was free from directional thoughts and able to wander as I sped through the hill country. The speed limit on the road from Llano to Brady is an uninterrupted 70 miles an hour, save for a mile long stretch through the nearly uninhabited town of Pontotoc.

Most of the buildings in Pontotoc, made from local stone, had fallen into disrepair and with the exception of one small building close to the shoulder of the two-lane highway, the town looked utterly abandoned. As I surveyed the area, slowing to its posted 50 mile per hour speed limit, a sign standing six feet above the intersection of the highway and a dirt road caught my attention.

“College St.”

Then a second sign came into view by another dirt road.

“Commerce St.”

On the western edge of town, the speed limit went back to 70, and I set the cruise control at 75. I continued on my journey, but my mind stayed locked on those two street signs, now a mile behind me. The idea of an unpaved and commerceless Commerce Street, and likewise a collegeless College Street was both funny and sad at the same time. Clearly the founding fathers of Pontotoc had big expectations of this place when they arrived, and they named their streets accordingly. Something had obviously thwarted their good intentions, and I imagined a railroad choosing to bypass this place or an unforgiving drought had probably been the culprit. Bad luck had left unrealized dreams in its wake.

The rocky buildings and street signs were left behind to crumble and rust, standing as a reminder of the pioneering spirit that swept through this area of Texas as people headed west in search of a life of their own. I was also headed west, hoping to discover a large crowd waiting for me in San Angelo. My destination had managed to avoid a Pontotocian fate, but the ghost town I had just passed through reminded me that the fate of my own pioneering musical endeavor was yet to be determined.

I’ve tried in vain to write a song about Pontotoc, or at the very least it’s two hopeful streets, but nothing has ever materialized.

Sometimes a back road adventure can lead to a song. Sometimes it can make you think about where you’re going and where you’ve been. And sometimes, it can remind you that just having a good plan isn’t always enough.

Sometimes you need a little luck.

I’ve been writing about our recent tour of Europe in several parts. This is the final installment.

The Long Way Home

Great adventures always seem to come with great costs, and with a day and a half left in our trip we were about to settle our debts. Payment would come in the form of travel—an extensive day and a half journey to Paris, where an Air France 777 would be waiting to take us home.

First, we hopped a train in Rimini for a 4-hour express trip back to the central station in Milan. Still gun shy from our ride on the curséd train number 785, I decided to pony up the extra Euros for a first class cabin. At the ticket window, I discovered that the difference in price between first class and general seating was minimal, and I cursed my luck for not having learned that helpful fact until the end of our travels. Holly and I had a six-person cabin to ourselves and we took full advantage of the extra space, stretching out our long legs to give them a much-needed break. We passed through Modena, and I watched our home base in Italy zip by us to the right. The sun was setting behind the mountains that just a few days prior had served as our welcome wagon to this wonderful country.

We arrived in Milan as the last minutes of daylight were retiring for the day and settled in for a two-hour wait for our next train. We were bound for Dijon Ville, France, and while fellow international traveler and compadre Matt Skinner told me that the trip was a scenic one, we would be making the journey under cover of darkness. Our train pulled up to its platform, and we boarded car 86. Since this was an overnight train, we found our compartment to be a departure from those on any of the trains we had previously taken. 6 beds, stacked 3 to a side extended from the walls to the left and right. The set up was not too different from what you would find on your average tour bus, minus the handy privacy curtains that surround each self-contained bunk… That, and the fact that on a tour bus one usually has the luxury of traveling with familiar people. Holly and I took our assigned bunks on the second level of each side and spread out the neatly wrapped sheets and pillow provided for our comfort. 4 complete strangers took their assigned bunks in the tiny space with us (the compartment was no bigger than a large walk in closet) and the lights went out as the train pulled away from the station.

I found sleeping difficult– we were on a tight schedule and I was afraid of missing our stop. I stared out of the large picture window at my feet with bleary eyes and watched the lights of the countryside pass by us. Three hours passed, and I began to see boats moored to docks along the southern edge of Lake Geneva 30 or 40 feet below the tracks. Rain started to fall, welcoming us to Switzerland. We arrived in Dijon at 6:30 AM and waited for our connecting train to Charles De Gaulle. The sun began to rise behind the thick cloud cover as the rain subsided. France was exactly as I had imagined it as a high school kid sitting in a classroom taking lessons in the language—rainy and overcast. The 7:00 AM train took us directly to the airport, and we checked our luggage and hustled to the gate just in time to board the Houston bound jet. We found our seats and prepared for the final leg of our journey back home to the United States.

With the help of friends both new and old, we had somehow managed to complete a 12-day whirlwind trip through Germany, Italy, San Marino, Switzerland, and now France. As I settled in for the 10-hour flight, I thought of everyone who made our trip memorable. Nina, who had opened her apartment to Holly, Rodney, and I, and who had sacrificed the last remaining days of her vacation to show us around her home city and take us to and from our show in Gottingen. Sebastian and his father, who took a train all the way from Berlin to catch our show. The kind strangers who helped us find our first gig in Hamburg. The couple that made it out to our second show in Hamburg and gave us a ride back to our hotel. The talented musicians with whom we shared the stages in Germany. Christian, Simona, and Max in Italy. Gianluca and Francesca. The countless fans who came to our shows. And of course, the dreaded train number 785. All of the people, places, and things that had made this trip so memorable—for better or for worse (in the case of that damned train)—danced through my head. We were truly blessed, and in more ways than I could count.

The plane taxied down the runway, and with Holly already fast asleep, I hoped that once again Bernoulli wouldn’t let us down.