![]() Walkin’ on such tight rope with my damn high hopes It’s a motorcycle drive by, baby dryin’ kind eyes You’re always yearning for home or searching for it either way, you’re a highway boy like the rest of us. Pick a song, any song, from Bryan’s quickly growing catalog, and you will find stories of lives lived on the edge guided by faith and the hope that tomorrow might be a little better than today. His music is undeniably born of middle America, and all that growing up in the rust belt entails, but its message is universal: Let my best be enough. ![]() It’s the factory workers, construction crews, unions, educators, service industry, healthcare workers, and anyone doing what they can to get by in a world that often makes them feel like that isn’t good enough. The boys back home are the backbone of America. Zach Bryan sings songs that the boys back home believe in. When I say “the boys,” I don’t mean young men specifically, but a way of life. If that is a sentiment you can get behind, then Zach Bryan is writing songs for you. The best you can aspire to in this life is the freedom to do what you love and make an honest living while surrounded by the people who give your life meaning. The trick is finding a job that doesn’t feel like one, and if you can accomplish that, you’ll be doing far better than most. You need the work as much as people need you to work. Your contributions to society, be it through art or manual labor, helps others survive. We need one another in more ways than we understand, and that codependency gives life purpose. While you’re here, however, you’re part of something bigger. You may enter this world alone and leave the same. The catch, as you already know, is that no such freedom exists. Like an itch you cannot scratch, you spend each day doing your best to create something-anything-that might give you enough success or attention to warrant abandoning any sense of traditional adult life. It’s like an addiction to a drug you can neither purchase nor define. Something inside you begins to believe your body is merely a cage and that it is one of many cages keeping you from a sense of freedom you will never know yet search for your entire life. When you work in music, you encounter many people who recognize the feeling I’ve just described. ![]() Subscribe to The Wampus and be the first to read James’ next essay.
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