The Story Behind "Drifter"

After I left Social Fallout I started getting together with a guitarist friend of mine to work on an idea for a new band. Unfortunately it didn’t work out as planned, but this was one of the concepts that we had started working on.

At the time, I was obsessed with the concept of the rock opera. I had been listening to The Who’s Quadrophenia and Tommy as well as Green Day’s American Idiot on repeat and I wanted to do something of that nature. The concept that I was working out in my head had to do with the story of a drifter traveling from town to town on the back of trains. The main story had to do with this drifter caught up in, and accused of, a murder that was being investigated. The themes would have dealt with issues of perception versus reality.

This song would have been one of the opening pieces of that rock opera. I wanted to start off with an overture of sorts, a strictly musical piece with no vocals, and follow that with this song that gives a little background to the story. I don’t have music to post for this since we never got around to recording it, but the style for this song was more grunge inflected like Pearl Jam circa Ten. I wanted to play with various styles to fit the mood of the themes present in the various songs, and would have tried to take inspiration from the various forms of 90’s alternative rock.

Because this was envisioned for a specific project with the specific writing partner that I’m in very limited contact with, I don’t foresee returning to this original project. Since I feel that this story was specifically tailored to the rock opera format, I also don’t foresee returning to it in a short story or novel format. As time passes, though, I could consider an epic poem-like format to preserve some since of what I was originally going for.