Traveling Companion -originally broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered (March, 2003) I came home from the army to a bachelor apartment in Easton, Pennsylvania, and a bad job as an office clerk. I was 25, my daughter Kristina was 7 -- we had every other weekend together, in two tiny rooms on the second floor. The rest of the time went to my guitar and my songwriting. And, at first, I tried hard to keep all these worlds separate. One Friday morning the phone rang at my desk. It was the booking manager of the Iron Horse, the famous music club in Northampton, Massachusetts. Three states and four hours away. "What're you doing later?" he asked. It was my weekend to have my daughter, and I told him so. "Never mind that," he said. "I've got a country princess from Nashville up here tonight. I don't think she's got forty-five minutes worth of material. You want to open the show, and when I say open I mean play for an hour?" I told him I was unsure about opening for a country singer. He coughed politely. "Pardon me," he said. "The correct response is 'I'll see you tonight.'" I thought for one moment. Then I said, "I'll see you tonight. I told my boss I had a death in the family -- which is why you should never hire musicians to work at a desk. By noon I was at Kristina's school, wading through a sea of diligent fourth graders. It was Friday afternoon, a gorgeous October Indian Summer, seventy degrees; there were better classrooms than the one she was in. "I'm bustin' you outta here," I said. Our four-hour drive became six as we hit traffic. The leaves in Connecticut and Massachusetts were red and gold and our windows were open. Sometimes half an hour went by without a word being said. I asked Kristina about school and she answered but she wasn't much interested in that. She told me instead about the Daniel Pinkwater book she was reading -- she talked fifteen minutes about it. Her skin was freckled from the summer, her fingers playing dancing games out the open window. We made the gig with minutes to spare. The Nashville princess entertained Kristina with knock-knock jokes while I tuned up and the bartender fed her while I played my set. There was almost no audience and a four-hour drive home lay ahead. Back in the car, nearing midnight, Kristina said, in her matter-of-fact Kristina way, "Not a lot of people there tonight." I grimaced and fought the urge for a cigarette. "Still," she said, "the waitresses all liked you. And I saw the sound man buy a CD." We ate drive-thru french fries and listened to Abbey Road on the tape player. Thanks for coming with me," I said later, the first of many times I would tell her this over the next few years. But, curled up with her own long hair as a pillow, she was already asleep. I rolled down the window, allowed myself the cigarette, and thought about my smart little girl how rare it is to find a good traveling companion.