LONG HORIZON DRIVE
Shavon Bonnie Legion × Makis Gibs Electric Guitar Improvisation → Original Song
Some songs are written. Others are found somewhere along the road.
Long Horizon Drive began with an electric guitar improvisation by Makis Gibs. I have always loved the worlds Makis creates in his longer improvisations, they feel less like pieces of music to me and more like places. There is movement in them. Characters. Landscapes. Something happening just beyond what you can see. This particular improvisation immediately pulled me into the world Makis had imagined around it: a rain-soaked road stretching beyond the city, neon reflected across the pavement, a vehicle moving toward an uncertain horizon, and that strange feeling of leaving one version of yourself behind without knowing exactly what waits ahead. That became the foundation for the lyrics I wrote for Long Horizon Drive. But this one fought me. I knew what I wanted emotionally, and I wanted the vocal to move dynamically through the guitar rather than simply sit on top of it. I spent days chasing it, different notes, different keys, layers of backing vocals, too much movement, not enough control. Eventually I got so deep inside the recording that I couldn't hear the song clearly anymore. I almost threw the track away. Instead, I sent it to Makis. He offered to work from a cleaner version of the improvisation and sent me back a better mixed section to build from. I went back in and completely re-recorded the vocals. With Brian helping me work through the mix, suddenly the thing I had been trying to hear finally started revealing itself. And maybe that's part of what this song was supposed to be. Sometimes the road doesn't become clear because you've figured everything out. Sometimes you just keep driving.You leave behind the noise, the identities, the expectations, the versions of yourself that no longer fit, and somewhere between where you were and wherever you're going, you discover that not knowing is not the same thing as being lost. That's the Bridgewalker space for me. The place between worlds. Between certainty and possibility. Between who we were and who we're becoming. Between the city behind us and the horizon ahead. For the video, I wanted to physically enter the world that Makis first created through his guitar and story — the wet pavement, neon rain, industrial city, the car, the endless road and that distant horizon. The visuals became another layer of the collaboration: his imagined world, my interpretation of it, and the song that somehow appeared between us. Huge love and gratitude to Makis Gibs for the original improvisation, the incredible guitar work, the world behind it, and especially for helping me get this one across the finish line when I was ready to walk away from it. And thank you to Brian Grass for sitting beside me through the vocal and mixing process, helping me hear what I could no longer hear after being buried inside the track for days. Sometimes collaboration isn't about everyone arriving with the finished answer. Sometimes one person builds a road. Another hears a story traveling down it. And somebody else helps you find your way when you lose the horizon. This is Long Horizon Drive.
— Shavon Bonnie Legion Bridgewalker
