The Mojave desert is a vast area that covers 25,000 square miles over three states. Las Vegas is technically part of the Mojave desert.

 

The title of the song suggests I could have been pretty much anywhere. Which is how life feels when you're out on the road weeks at a time alone, hauling freight.

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But there is a town of Mojave which lies about 50 miles east of Bakersfield in a godforsaken stretch of desert few people ever need to travel. One night I was driving along highway14, just east of Mojave. I saw a set of headlights, perhaps a mile away, down a long, incline  coming towards me. When it was a quarter mile from me and closing fast I realized it was veering into my lane. At first, I expected the lights to get back into their lane as this was not uncommon, but on this occasion the car kept coming, crossing the centerline. I realized I was going to be in a head-on collision and I did what no trucker driver is ever trained to do, turn the wheel sharply towards the shoulder. I cut the rig hard right and then immediately back left to keep the trailer from jackknifing. Fortunately, the shoulder was wide enough and solid gravel, otherwise I would have ended up splayed open on my side in the middle of nowhere. Without even a protesting skid, I was back in my lane on solid concrete, on my way west again.

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I thought I would feel or hear the car hit my trailer. But I didn't. And I was so struck with adrenaline I didn't even think to stop. I just kept driving. I wanted to get far away from that place on the highway where a minute earlier I should have died. The dispatcher called a few minutes later, as the truck cameras automatically engage whenever a truck veers or stops suddenly, to ask if I was all right. 

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The musical elements for this song were intended to be used for the song Red Sky but I didn't have the range to sing the melody in the original key, and it didn't sound right pitched down 3 semitones, so I made it an instrumental.

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Many times I've been somewhere east of Mojave, on my way home to Los Angeles, after a long campaign on the road, a few short hours from my wife and children, deeply satisfied with the anticipation that I would be safely back home again

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