Tom Faulkner
Lost In The Land of Texico

Imagine being young and having your whole life ahead of you.

Imagine being a romantic dreamer and having just finished reading the last pages of On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

Imagine living an ordinary life in old New Orleans and suddenly having miles of wild land to traverse before you, accompanied by two faithful primadonnas: your old suitcase and your inseparable acoustic guitar.

The ingredients for a romantic and at the same time adventurous album are all here. Set in a fantastical invented world named "Texico," the traveler Tom Faulkner captures the wild and sweet emotions of the lands between Texas and New Mexico, the main backdrop of his passionate and at the same time bitter adventures.

And Tom knows how to take you with him on the road for a handful of minutes: you can feel his own exciting anxiety before departure, gathering all the courage needed to report, invoking the heart to listen to his fear and emotion with the acoustic ballad "When You Call Upon The Heart".

With the powerful southern-blues "Lost In The Land Of Texico",  you won’t know whether to be happy or sad about being lost in these fantastic and boundless invented landscapes, as the sky darkens on the horizon, the Rio Grande swells slowly, and you can do nothing but take refuge in an old cellar to drink Margarita and be entertained by some caring damsel.

With "River On The Rise",  you will recall the old black blues, in which Tom's sad and intense voice doesn’t sound out of place at all.

In a journey that touches various locations, encounters will not be lacking, nor will a search for love as a companion, even if fleeting: "Angelina"  is a romance dedicated to one of these elusive loves, in which the sadness and pain of a farewell are palpable, and your heart will cry along with the songwriter who sadly invokes "Angelina, Yo no puedo olvidar"!

With "Do Bea's Dance",  you suddenly find yourself in a black dance hall, where Cajun and Rock meet perfectly, and the urge to dance with Tom and alongside a thousand other interesting faces will overwhelm you.

But staying in one place is inconceivable in situations like these, and the "Highway Man"   sooner or later must leave a town behind and resume the journey to meet the next adventure... A fact too often forgotten is the unhealthy diet on the road, so why not invoke an ode to "Fried Chicken Skin"? You might taste it in an empty, dimly lit, and slightly seedy spot where you realize you are completely alone with no one beside you to lend a hand or good advice, "Nobody There To Love Me": yes, no one really cares what you are thinking or what you will do once you leave the place.

Leaving a city is always painful, says Faulkner, who in "Get Out Of Austin" finds himself forced to leave, as a sweet Rosine loves love triangles, but Faulkner seems to think differently even though in his "southern style" tone he swears he thought he had been in paradise with her for a certain period.

And as every journey has a beginning, every journey has an end. The incredibly sweet "Sign Of Love"   can do nothing but break your heart: you have traveled a good part of America, seen many faces, faced many dangers, loved intensely and grown, but in the end, you always return to your origins, to your childhood places, and to all that you have loved and simply cannot help loving.

Lose yourself in the land of Texico, and I'm sure that when you find your way back, it will only be a sweet awakening.