My Walkabout

My sister gave me Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to listen to when I was moving out of State.

“It’s not my favorite Wilco album, but I think you’ll really like it!” 

She always understood me better than I did. I used to listen to it nonstop as I would drive around Arizona, through small decimated towns hit hard from the impact of big corporate companies such as WalMart.

I had an idea back in 2012, on the tenth anniversary of the album’s release, to drive through small town USA and see if the economy was still in shambles, if Big Business was still destroying rural America.

The weekend before Christmas, 2015, I climbed in my little car at 4 am, and starting a one thousand mile journey through my home State of Utah to complete that idea.

This is part one of a four part series that will show what I saw, put to the music of Wilco’s album.

Towns that do not reflect the suffering middle class that the media continually talks about, strong people that thrive off the land, live within their means and die with no regrets.

Vintage buildings that showcase a different America, one that is perhaps forgotten about in today’s visuals through computers and cell phones.

TV’s and social media outlets.

People and communities just living, breathing, and being in the moment.