Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4, 2008.

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] Fingerprints on the glass, rolling through the [Music] past.

You watched me go through the golden snow.

Take me out of here back through the fear.

Pavement in a line, burned buildings a sign.

So, now stay, how do we [Music] repay.

It's the possibility oh Amery.

[Music] Collarbones of [Music] pain, hungry in the [Music] grain.

Where are you in life?

Does this feel right?

Seek the feeling now.

Well I don't know [Music]how.

Fall back into your eyes, there you'll find reprise.

So now stay.

How do we [Music] repay?

It's the possibility oh Amery.

Oh Amery.

So now stay.

How do we repay?

It's the possibility, oh [Music] Amery.

Oh Amery.

Oh Amery.

[Music] [Music] My name is Eli Gardiner.

I'm a songwriter first and formost and that can lead into different genres.

Sometimes it's folk, sometimes it's Americana, sometimes it's rock and roll.

I started songwriting before actually I knew how to play guitar.

I started playing guitar because I wanted to put music to the songs I was writing and that was the end of high school and it was a long process from there into performing and into being able to play songs in front of people but my initial thing was I wanted to be a songwriter.

I liked music like Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Neil Young.

I love that kind of music and I wanted to write my own songs and so I started just writing lyrics and my dad was a classical guitarist and initially when I was 12 years old, I wanted to play guitar before I wrote songs and he started to teach me all the proper form and how to write music and I wanted nothing to do with that.

It was too formal.

I'm more of a hands-on person and so a few years went by and then near, you know.

the end of high school I was like I want to learn to play guitar again and so he just gave me a chord book.

I started learning some basic chords and from there started putting those chords to the lyrics I was writing.

[Music] Streets on fire I'm on the other side.

I woke up today but my head won't let me hide.

My phone is dead and the dead won't take my call.

You can find me in a dark room staring at the wall.

How long can you work just to be let down?

How long can you dig when there's nothing to be found?

Where's the difference and the humanity?

Is this a part of me or a memory?

So dear sun shine on me.

I don't want to go, I don't want to go.

Dear sun shine on me.

I don't want to go I don't want to go.

[Music] She fought the past till it let go and lost its will.

Now she has clear eyes and her soul is standing still.

You don't know where you're going till you arrive.

Like a Greyhound headed north on thirty-five.

The windows are open but my eyes are still closed.

It's a magic trick learning to let go.

So crack me open take all those inside sparks.

Tiny details, frozen bones and broken hearts.

So dear Sun shine on me.

I don't want to go.

I don't want to go.

Dear Sun shine on me.

I don't want to go.

I don't want to go.

Dear Sun shine on [Music] me.

I don't want to go.

I don't want to go.

[Music] Dear Sun shine on me.

I don't want to go.

I don't want to go.

I would say, you know, for anyone that has done meditation or any type of work or play where they're in the moment that's what being in the song is like.

So, in a way it can be a meditation where you're not thinking, you're in whatever, the music is flowing through you and it's really a non-thought process where you can't , if you're recognizing you're in it, you're not in it and sometimes I think that's why performers shut their eyes, close their eyes is to try to get into that and shut out the outside world and zone in to that meditative place.

Recently I played a house show in St. Paul and I remember kind of looking up at one point and a woman kind of with her eyes closed, kind of in the music, those type of things are nice indicators that you're on, you know, you're doing the right thing.

[Music] Isn't it something the ego we [Music] feed.

An hourly rotation and a conveyor belt of need.

Molded and shaped, perception it [Music] shifts.

Living our lives to the story it [Music] flips.

Enemies come and they go.

[Music] Don't look any further, they'll let you know.

In the distance lies the peace [Music] and all our lives live in retreat.

[Music] Placed in your mind it'll be so.

A place to lay your head and it will grow.

[Music] In the ways the days will come.

They don't know they will run.

[Music] Vote for for human rights not humanity scared.

Two sides of a coin and ill prepared.

[Music] But the blood spilled is not [Music] fake.

With the greed and power a king they'll make.

[Music] So this song is called Blood and it's about my brothers and it's about growing up in Michigan and it's a kind of a hard look at what they went through.

Both my brothers were addicts and I lost one of my brothers to a drug addiction and it's about a key moment in our life around Christmas time when it was a really bad, it was a really tough time for my family and it's about looking at that moment but through the eyes of his daughters and how really just how my family's found hope through their young eyes and through their their young experiences.

We were running down the road, I was just [Music] 15.

On a summer night in Michigan bugs through the ripped screen.

I can see it in their limbs, the wildness of youth.

I was the oldest of the three, its not something that I'd choose, it's not something that I'd choose.

It's the blood in the water, a hurt you don't know.

In the eyes of his daughters may they reap what they sow.

[Music] I saw him in the room, didn't recognize his face.

With those cutting and curved words, tried to put him in his place.

On a Christmas day he went away after putting a hole in the wall.

With my weight on top of him he continued to fall, he continued to fall.

It's the blood in the water, a hurt you don't know.

In the eyes of his daughters may they reap what they sow.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] I was driving down the road, I just turned 35.

The snow on the windshield, I'm just trying to stay [Music] alive.

All those years go by and turn on a dime.

I just want to pick up the phone to hear you one more time, to hear you one last time.

It's the blood in the water, a hurt you don't [Music] know.

In the eyes of his daughters may they reap what they sow.

It's the blood in the water.

[Music] A hurt you don't know.

In the eyes of his daughters may they reap what they sow.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] So I used to be kind of frustrated with the songwriting process where I would try too hard or I would have an idea too specific and I try to write exactly to that idea and I've learned kind of the hard way, I'm not that kind of songwriter.

I can't write a song exactly on a topic and also I don't really like those type of songs that are, there's nothing left in the imagination where it's like I got a truck and a dog and that's all the song is about.

I like stuff where it's like oh you hear it and then you actually, it takes a little bit of time for it to sink in and actually I have a song I'm playing today that's initially about that.

I was writing about that process in a song and the opening lyric is my favorite albums.

I don't always like in the start because I think those things that where it's just there's no depth to them.

I think initially people can like them and catch on to like something catchy, something they can sing along to but to have something that stays with you.

I don't think on the initial listen that that's always easy to grab on to.

So, I think those are the type of songs I seek to write and the things that I like to listen to personally.

[Music] [Music] [Music] My favorite albums, I don't always like in the [Music] start.

You told me lately that's your favorite part.

But I'm not sleeping.

I don't remember my dreams.

You got to search blindly to know what it means.

Because it's all the [Music] same but different each [Music] time.

The moon's a sliver of our satisfied mind.

I remember thinking scared and letting it go.

Ink to the paper, I don't want to try, I want to know.

All that sparkles is not a Gibson Les Paul but your breath is ragged if you jump you may [Music] fall.

'Cause it's all the same and different each time.

The moon's a sliver of our satisfied mind.

It's all the same but different each each time.

The moon's a sliver of our satisfied mind.

[Music] Where leaves on the trees and the smell of the pine conjured of feelings and brought me back in time to when I was a kid, socks to my knees and the wind would talk to me through the trees.

She was in the backpack on his back as we marched forward across the railroad track.

Our red bandanas shown in the Sun and we felt the midnight coming on the run.

[Music] So when the orange and the violets are in the sky, when the seasons are changed and gone by.

The hill in the trees in the two track.

When we climbed old HogsBack, when we climbed old HogsBack.

oh oh oh And when we got to the top we could see the lake.

The reds of the trees they left a heartache.

Lying down looking over the edge.

Flashback to pictures and what was said.

When I drive that road or when I see the sign, I'm right back there left to define.

When life was in color yet white and black.

When we climbed old Hogsback, when we climbed old Hogsback.

oh oh [Applause] oh oh [Music] oh So when the orange and the violets are in the sky.

When the seasons are changed and gone by.

The hill in the trees and the two track.

When we climbed old Hogsback, when we climbed old Hogsback.

Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4, 2008.