“Texas, they got some big long roads down there…” (Chris Rea)
I don’t know exactly when it dawned on me that I had to move, but then I had to work through where to go, whether to do the traditional thing of looking for a job in this most difficult and stilted market, or to just follow my heart. Nashville beckoned; after all, it was where I had moved from. It would have been so easy to return, to friends, and familiar clubs and restaurants, to a place that I lived in happily for five years. It felt like home, for sure. But I have always had this gypsy blood, this wanderlust, and for the last fifteen years, have been making pilgrimages to Austin. And they have become more frequent as the years have gone on.
I can’t believe the XM dream ended, and with it, my channel X Country. It felt as if that was the path I was meant to walk, the last gig I would have, the one I was meant to do from birth. But it is over. So sometime at the beginning of the summer, I decided it was time to move on.
The process was methodical. I hired an organizer. She guided me through the weaning of 25 years of boxes, some that had been dragged unopened across the country twice, with lots of other pit stops. (A career in radio is much like one in the military; you don’t set down deep roots.) It has taken the better part of the summer, but the time is at hand. I have whittled down what I own to an 8X16 POD and I am almost ready to jump in my car and take off. Oh how bittersweet it is to be transitioning. After all, this is the house that my husband of 22 years died in. It is where our son graduated from high school, and it is the attainment of the American Dream, the first house I ever bought.
Radio, you just keep moving. And so I will. I invite you Music Fog reader, to join me on this trip!
-Jessie Scott
