Luke Callen
Recently, Eli met with local singer-songwriter Luke Callen to share his new song “Wolves of New York.”
Luke Callen. Photos by Eli Gardiner, 2024.
Minneapolis-based folk artist Luke Callen is a consummate storyteller. He specializes songs that drip with honest Midwest charm and a mischievous glint. It’s music that you can relax into, paired with lyrics you’ll want to chew on and savor, that ask something of their listener. Luke shared some insight into the creation of this new song:
“I’m not the narrator here; I delegated that to my old pal Wolf van Elfmand, who currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. As kindred spirits, we share a longing for a sense of place, having moved around a lot. The song starts off by leaving town: ‘So long Denver, Colorado adios adieu,’ then we move onto the reason why: ‘What I left behind just a peace of mind and a pot I got too tired to stir.’ Lastly, we look back on the experience: ‘Well I'm sure I’ll miss the mountains oh so heavy with snow.’
“I wrote this song years after finally moving away from Colorado and now I’m looking back, exploring how we tend to measure ourselves in movement, with each town a marker in our life, which shows us how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. I like to think of the through-line of this song — the chorus in particular: ‘Goodbye I’m going saddled up to the morning sun - me I’ll keep a rolling until I know how far I've come’ as a reminder to oneself that we’ve come a long way, having grown, gained, and shed wisdom. Sometimes it’s hard to see a way to get unstuck, and sometimes it takes a good long drive across the country to realize you’ve come a long way, even if you still have a long way to go.”
The full version of this song can be found on Luke Callen’s most recent album Also Going Nowhere, released February 1, 2024, recorded and produced by Erik Koskinen at his studio Real Phonic Records in Cleveland, MN. Also Going Nowhere features Lauren Anderson on bass and harmony vocals, Chris Gray on drums, Franky Moscow on keys, and Erik Koskinen on various guitars.
Eli Gardiner is a songwriter, photojournalist, and video creator. You can catch him playing shows all over the Midwest with his band or as a solo performer, and he also captures video and photography for local musicians and nonprofits. His passion is Storytelling through music and pictures.
