Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard Capture Wanderlust on “Travelin’ Heart”
Lemme ask you this, have you ever have one of those days where the walls feel like they’re closing in and you just want to toss your phone out the window, hop in the car, and drive until the map ends? You know that particular feeling is what this track titled “Travelin’ Heart” by Joseph Turner & The Dudes of Hazard feels like.
One thing for sure is, Joseph Turner is an interesting guy. He’s writing out of the Dutch delta, but the music sounds like it belongs on a dusty highway in the middle of nowhere. And this makes this release feels different. But something happened particularly for this release. Well he actually learned how to play the mandolin just to give it that organic, folky vibe, and I must admit it did the magic. The track is this cool mix of indie pop and Americana. You’ve got the acoustic guitar and mandolin doing the heavy lifting, but then a pedal steel kicks in and suddenly you’re in a John Denver or Willie Nelson headspace, but with a modern twist.
Now how this track was birthed is beautiful. What happened was, Joseph was on a road trip along the East Coast and started recording ideas right into his phone. And you can tell it has this immediate, unfiltered energy. He eventually took those voice notes back to his home studio and built them out. He brought in his friends, Petey and Gigi (the Dudes of Hazard), to handle the backing vocals, and they added some warm harmonies to give make the chorus really pop. They even recorded the drums and pedal steel in different locations, finally getting the whole thing mastered in Nashville by Sam Moses. It’s a literal “road trip” of a recording process.
Now wait, let’s talk about the actual track for a second. It starts off really intimate and quiet, like you’re sitting right there in the room with him, and then the track behind to build and blossoms into this beautiful melodic track. I love how big and melodic the chorus is, like the kind of thing you’d want to belt out while you’re driving too fast with the windows down and enjoying those breeze.
The lyrics are what really grabbed me, though. It’s about travel, sure, but it’s more about using movement to clear your head. The type where you keep moving or driving till your head is filled with those beautiful sceneries you seeing, the natural environment you feeling and everything the road has to offer. There’s a line in the bridge that says, “take your time to find another light on the road, redefine the way you’re gonna carry the load.”
And I think it’s a beautiful way of saying don’t be Soo hard on yourself, for sometimes when tough times come, just hit the road and let things be, keep going and along the line, the weight of it all will feel lighter. Just as the song ends, it gives you this sigh of relief and there you are, all good and calm. It’s a beautiful track that doesn’t try too hard to be a pop or country song, it sits in there and let’s you decide!
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