Artist: Wesley Randolph Eader
Hometown: Portland, OR
Song: “Carry on Down the Road”
Album: Highway Winds
In Their Words: “I’ve always been obsessed with the past. I’m riddled with nostalgia or I’m a tradition-bearer, some may say. Sometimes, when I am stuck in my own head or looking for inspiration, I’ll walk to a junk store and rummage through stacks of 35mm slides. The act of dusting off the next slide and holding it up to the light to reveal the image is very therapeutic — it’s kind of like reading poetry.
Recently, I discovered the Internet Archives, a vast digital library of public domain film. I really wanted to edit some footage together to make a video for one of my songs. Most of the clips range from the 1920s-50s and reflect that sort of old-time fascination with technology that saturated the period. Whether it was the golden age of the automobile, the development of jet engines, or the Cold War space race, the hope of taking humanity higher, faster, farther was heavy on America’s heart and there are thousands of clips of steamboats, locomotives, roller-coasters, airplanes, automobiles, and rocket ships on the archives to prove it. It’s so fascinating that humanity has put so much blood, sweat, and tears into developing ways to more efficiently move on to the next place!
All these images and symbols of movement seemed to fit perfectly with my song ‘Carry on Down the Road.’ It’s a rambling song, a string of short stories about the perseverance of the human spirit. It’s about the kind of hopefulness that requires a personal relocation or redirection in order to be found.” — Wesley Randolph Eader
Photo credit: Robbie Augspurger
