It’s true, you can never go home again. At least not back to the same state of home you left and the person you were upon departure. Geographically home, yes; Psychologically and spiritually? You’re outta luck, pal. Honestly, though, what purpose would ‘going home’ serve if it put us right back where we were, erasing any evidence of progress and growth?
“I burned everything I own, left it in a pile smoldering,” says Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras on “The Day I Left Home”, a winsome country ballad about bundling up and heading out in search of your heart’s desire somewhere beyond your own backyard. No matter where that journey takes you, no matter how far afield you’ve wandered or how long you’ve been gone, there will always be a path to lead you back home. Even if you’ve burned every conceivable bridge to your past, a new one, tenuous and rickety though it might be, is always under construction.
“The Day I Left Home” is not only country music in genre, but Country music with a capital ‘C’. It’s but the start of Gibb and the Hidden Cameras’ explorations of home (i.e. Canada) and the idea of homecoming, themes at the centre of their new album Home On Native Land. In many ways, “The Day I Left Home” and its parent album engages its audience in the same kinds of conversations and explorations we hope our site will: a search for the existence of Canadian capital ‘C’ Country music. In Joel Gibbs’ hands, it is equal parts wanderlust and homesickness. It honours traditions while turning conventions inside out and taking risks. Infused with the spirit of home, and the grandeur of the land, “The Day I Left Home” is is really more about returning than departing.
