Those who knew me knows that I’m passionate about qualitative research. A self-proclaimed narrative inquirer, I’m drawn towards anything that has some kind of storytelling element in it.

And it so happened that I have this strange “Travis moment” going on in me lately after I came across the band’s latest single “Nina’s Song” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbum2xr3K40.

One song led to the other, and all reminded me of the songs that were the true companions during my doctoral years. Numbers like “Writing to Reach You”, “Driftwood”, “Side”, “Sing”, “Why Does It Always Rain on Me”, “Flowers in the Window”, etc., surely bring back some memories. My personal fav is “Closer”, always and forever (with that Dougie’s smashing bass, and yupp… it was Ben Stiller in the video…).

The fact that Fran Healy and I share the same year of birth (he’s 3 days older than me, matter of factly…), I now realised while I was embracing my own creative flow circa 2007-2009, he was also being experimental about the direction of his own creativity.

So it was a pure joy to stumble upon a recording of him entitled “A Chronological Acoustical Journey Through The Travis Back Catalogue” on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ynLL1U34os&t=2386s

Fran was indeed a great storyteller; sharing the story of each song that he had written over the years, all in chronological order.

Now I wish I had all their the CDs back in those years….