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| Travis Ehrenstrom plays his guitar at Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea in Southern California. Ehrenstrom and his wife, Courtney Bruguier, recently returned home to Bend after an almost yearlong journey across the U.S., during which Ehrenstrom wrote a song for every state they visited. (Photo by Courtney Bruguier) |
In April 2019, the married couple left their home in Bend in an RV with the goal of visiting every state in the U.S. Ehrenstrom, well known in Central Oregon as a musician with his eponymous band, as well as a veteran of the Sisters Folk Festival’s Americana Project, would write a song inspired by each state.
The couple -- along with their two dogs and cat -- made it through the West Coast and most of the middle of the country. But the East Coast, with its high population density and cramped cities not conducive to driving through in a 25-foot RV, stymied the family.
“It was just getting difficult to travel around because we didn’t have a vehicle,” Bruguier said recently from the family’s new apartment in Bend. “A lot of the campgrounds are pretty far away from the cities, so we were having to do Lyfts a lot and meet Rent-a-Cars and it was getting expensive. We decided that we needed to do it in a different way on the East Coast.”
Open roads, closed box
The Northeastern leg of the trip didn’t go as planned, but not much else did either. The couple outran about five tornado warnings, and they were in Nashville in early March when a particularly large one ripped through the city (fortunately they made it out fine). They discovered out-of-the-way places such as Biloxi, Mississippi, and the Salton Sea in California. And they learned more about the country, its people and its wildly differing regions and cultures than they ever expected -- including just how big it really is.
“One of the things that was more eye-opening than I had anticipated was how isolated the Pacific Northwest feels from the rest of the country once you get far enough away from it,” Ehrenstrom said. “Specifically, I got gas once in Florida and gave the attendant my driver’s license, and he asked me what state Oregon was in.”
Ehrenstrom wrote about 38 songs over the course of the cross-country trip, what he’s dubbed Our Creative States. He and Bruguier returned home pretty much the same day Oregon Gov. Kate Brown ordered everyone in the state to stay home due to the spread of the novel coronavirus.
“It’s been weird,” Ehrenstrom said. “We’ve been taking it pretty seriously, too. We haven’t really left. We got a little apartment back in Bend and we haven’t really left. We went from being on the road for almost a year, coming back to being stuck in a little box.”
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| Courtney Bruguier stands in front of one of the dinosaur sculptures at Peggy Sue's Diner in California. (Photo by Travis Ehrenstrom) |
The journey begins
With Ehrenstrom writing songs and Bruguier serving as travel planner, photographer and blog manager, the family initially set out on a northerly journey that took them through Idaho and Montana. They then headed south in an attempt to outrun bad weather.
“I think that in the beginning we really knew where we wanted to go, but we didn’t really know how long,” Bruguier said. “We knew we wanted to do the national parks, but we’d never done this before so we had to wing it a lot. I feel like as soon as we got through Utah, we didn’t know what we were doing anymore.”
Ehrenstrom brought along a stripped-down version of his home studio to record with in the RV, including a small percussion kit, keyboard, guitar, mandolin and harmonicas. The resulting songs stick to Ehrenstrom’s folk and rock roots, while reflecting some of the flavor of each song’s state.
“They’re essentially how I would normally record demos,” he said. “One things I want to do when all of the songs are recorded is select a batch of my favorite tunes from the trip and do a more formal take at recording those songs.”
Some of those songs came easier than others. A Sisters native, Ehrenstrom often draws inspiration from nature, and this is reflected in some of the earlier songs from the trip, such as Wyoming’s “This Old Road” or Colorado’s “Red Rocks.” He would visit museums in most of the states the family visited to get some idea of the region’s history.
Eventually the songs started to reflect more of Ehrenstrom’s personal experiences in each state.
“I used to really think that John Denver was kind of a silly songwriter,” he said. “The older I get and the more I think about the songs that he wrote, the more I think that there’s something to be said there for -- I think it’s just my experience of who I am as a person. It’s the way I relate to life. I felt like that changed as we left (the western) part of the country too. Some of the later stuff is less natural.”
The Bombay Beach Club
The Salton Sea in Southern California, one of the more memorable parts of the trip, came toward the end of the couple’s “outdoor honeymoon period,” as Ehrenstrom put it. The shallow, saline sea is located on the San Andreas Fault. After being unable to find any place to camp in the Joshua Tree area, the duo headed to Bombay Beach on the sea.
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| A sign at Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea in California. |
Ehrenstrom and Bruguier spent a couple of weeks in Bombay Beach. Ehrenstrom wrote the bouncy “Bombay Beach Club,” taking a cue from the sunny sounds and harmonies of The Beach Boys’ classic ’60s era.
“Being at the Salton Sea was probably the highlight for me,” Bruguier said. “It wasn’t anything (like) what I experienced, or what I thought our experience of California was going to be like. I think just being there and seeing how other people in the world are living was very eye-opening for me.”
New perspectives
Other than a stop at Peggy Sue’s Diner in Southern California, home to some giant, “perfectly tacky” concrete dinosaur sculptures, Ehrenstrom’s favorite part of the trip was stargazing in Escalante, Utah.
“It was the middle of summer, and (it was) the first time in my life I’d seen the Milky Way vividly,” Ehrenstrom said. “And it was just this really surreal experience of not being that far from home, but experiencing something that I hadn’t seen my whole life, and it was something that’s visually available every night.”
The duo also got some perspective on the social and political divisions that have been hammered into the country’s consciousness in recent years. Through visiting out-of-the-way communities such as Bombay Beach, they realized that even words such as “liberal” or “conservative” mean different things depending on where in the U.S. you are located.
“We definitely met people who were kooky in how they interacted,” Ehrenstrom said. “We went into some place in Marfa, Texas, and I went to grab a coffee and the first thing the guy asked me was whether or not I thought they should have a wall there. I think the internet tends to overplay the division, but it’s definitely there for sure.”
Fortunately, Ehrenstrom’s conversation in Marfa wasn’t too confrontational.
“I think (I said) something along the lines of, ‘You’re the first person I’ve spoken to in Texas, and you’re just going straight to the point.’ I told him I thought it was a really stupid idea, and he said, ‘That’s the correct answer. Welcome to Marfa.’”
More adventures to come
Now stuck at home, Ehrenstrom and Bruguier are looking forward to restarting the project once nationwide lockdowns are lifted. Ehrenstrom said he hopes to visit the Northeast, Alaska and Hawaii this year to finish up the remaining songs. In fact, he planned on flying out to Vermont in April and renting a car before everything shut down.
Ehrenstrom plans to release the project in phases. He has recorded about 23 of the songs so far, and wants to put together a release featuring the first 25 songs in the near future. He also is working on a coffee-table book design for the full project to feature photos and stories from the family’s journey.
“We talk a lot about that not being the final adventure and wanting to get back out on the road again,” Ehrenstrom said. “I think for me it was a very powerful experience, and I would suggest that if anyone has the inclination to do it, that they should if they can -- if we ever get to go outside again.”
Check out the Patreon page for Our Creative States and support the journey here.
Listen to the songs that have been released so far in Our Creative States:
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