A Playlist and a Story

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What is it about the weather in Chicago this week that has all of us making playlists to accompany it? Whatever it is, it’s also making this Alabamian homesick. Going home is problematic for me, though, as I’d imagine it is for many displaced young folks. Home is comfortable — full of the faces and stories that you love. But any sense of anonymity disappears back home. Suddenly, you are who you always were and can be no one else.

As the warm wind comes off Lake Michigan, I’ll be listening to these lazy songs. They aren’t all necessarily Southern but, along with this weather, they send me to a chair by the Gulf, a dinner on the back porch or a slow drive in a friend’s car.

Music that captures all the happiness and hesitance of going home.

Hayley Wells is a Southerner in Chicago who tumbles here and tee-weets here. She agrees with Bob Dylan that you better know where you’re going or stay where you are, and she apparently cannot make a playlist without adding an Avett song to it at the very last minute. She likes common sense, good food, storytelling, Deadliest Catch and the musicians at Potbelly’s without exception.