More accurately, I had just moved back to the mountains after a year and a half hiatus from ski bumming. I couldn’t help myself from moving back for another taste of high Rockies air, but this time I refrained from deep diving into full-on mountain living which I knew all too well could eat a man for life.

Wilco had just released their latest record and were being the princes of indie music that year. Godlike, even. Later that year, the documentary with the same name as this song came out telling the story about how they were dissolving under the pressure of repeating success they’d reached, wrapped hands, sharp swords. People we’re watching.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot played through my ears hundreds of times as I drove my 1989 Ford Escort through the wintering fall sky under long days through Kansas. I only had a small CD book resting on the front seat next to me, but it felt easier to hit replay than trying to find a new album, so I let it loop and loop what feels a hundred times in my memory. The higher the road ramped up the hills out of the flatland, “it makes no difference to me,” Jeff Tweetie sang to me again and again.