Watershed Playlist

Good stories conjure up images, but sometimes they’re even better with a soundtrack. Here’s a short playlist that pairs well with Watershed.

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(Chapter: Granite Valley)

Tell Me About Missouri

Wyatt Earp

James Newton Howard

On long scenic drives across the country, I've built a playlist heavy on expansive movie scores — the kind that make you want to pull over just to look. This one is titled for Missouri, but the swelling strings and French horn melody carry something wider: the beauty of open land, the dignity of the people who tend it, and the delicacy of children discovering it for the first time. On the backside of the Flattops, down Granite Creek, across the pastures to Grainger — this is the land closest to GW's heart. It's also Meg Lewis's land. She put down roots here years ago, planted two girls, and has no intention of ever leaving.

(Chapter: Lewis Ranch)

Hurry Sundown

Peter, Paul and Mary

In the mid-60s, while most kids my age followed the Beatles into rock, a smaller group of us went down the folk path — Baez, early Dylan, Judy Collins, and my favorite, Peter, Paul and Mary, all spinning on a portable Zenith with a record changer. Hurry Sundown carries their sharp, braided harmonies, Mary Travers’ piercing vocal, and horn accents that feel almost out of place in folk — and somehow earn it. It’s a song about weary, daily renewal. That’s Meg and Pete Lewis’s ranch on the backside of the Flattops. A small working operation, two girls to raise, an RV park built to keep the cash flow steady. You don’t get rich. You don’t get ahead. You hold your own.

(Chapter: Gift Wrap)

In My Bed

Dru Hill

Dru Hill's 90s R&B slides into a higher register that channels real moments of Stevie Wonder — soulful, sensual, unmistakably sexy. It was the lyric that grabbed me first. The songwriters almost certainly weren't imagining a romance with three corners when they wrote it. Off the rack, it's a very tailored fit.

(Chapter: Wyoming)

What I Don’t Know

Emily Daniels

Sometimes I'll pick a style on Apple Music just to see where the algorithm takes me — GPS roulette. You know roughly where you're headed, just not how you'll get there. That's how I found Emily Daniels, a Nashville native, one evening on a road I hadn't planned to be on. There's a saying that you listen to the music when you're happy and the lyrics when you're sad. This is the soundtrack running inside Tali's head as she measures the distance between her and GW — a distance that was never really about miles.

(Chapter: Bahamas)

The Changing Lights

Stacey Kent

Years ago an audiophile introduced me to Stacey Kent. Her voice is liquid crystal. This song is a romance story in itself — silken sophisticated jazz that conjures a town car sliding through Manhattan or a sugar-fine beach in the Bahamas. GW and Sharna never looked more inevitable than they do here.

(Chapter: Lake Creek)

White Liar

Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert sings this one as a warning — the lyric spells out exactly what happens to a liar once they're finally found out, delivered over a slack, unhurried guitar line and a beat built for a line dance. It's country with teeth. The song is evocative of Sharna either way you catch her — an LBD and heels crossing a room toward you, or sculpted jeans and a higher-heeled cowboy boot walking away. Dangerous coming. Dangerous going.

(Chapter: Rapprochement)

King of the Lost Boys

Sara Bareilles

I was on a walk when Sara Bareilles came through the AirPods — that strong, clear voice over a propulsive bass line — and right then I wanted to put the lyrics into the email Tali sends GW from the redwoods. Copyright law said no. So instead I'll say this: find the song, listen once, and you'll know exactly what Tali was trying to tell him. When it hit me, the emotion came out through my fingertips. That's the only review I have.

GW Canyon Journey Entire Playlist.pdf

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