The Way (4:16)

“The Way” revolves around an older married couple who decide to give it all away by packing up and going driving and drinking. Along the way, their car breaks down, so they continue on foot. As the song goes on, it becomes apparent that these two achieve happiness by losing touch with the world.

Fastball bassist Tony Scalzo came up with the idea for the song after reading journalistic articles which described the disappearance of an older married couple, Raymond and Lela Howard from Salado, Texas, who left home in June of 1997 to attend a family reunion but never arrived[1]. They were discovered two weeks later, dead, at the bottom of a ravine near Hot Springs, Arkansas, hundreds of miles off their intended route[2].

About the song, Scalzo said that “It’s a romanticized take on what happened” - he “pictured them taking off to have fun, like they did when they first met.”

At the beginning of the song, it plays a radio scanning through the FM stations, and one of the songs is Jewel’s 1997 song Foolish Games.

This song is based on the true story of Lela and Raymond Howard, an elderly couple from Salado, Texas who drove to a nearby festival and kept going. She had Alzheimer’s disease and he was recovering from brain surgery. When they disappeared, a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman wrote a series of articles about the missing couple. Fastball bassist Tony Scalzo came up with the idea for the song after reading the articles (the band is from Austin).