Every week, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 41-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Why yes, Horse Heaven Hills is a real place. South of Yakima and west of Horse Heaven itself. Turns out it’s vineyard country, whereas I was using it as a hypothetical location where colors have no names. The lyrics are poetically scientific, written at a time when I thought more people were drawing similar conclusions about land as it relates to colonialism. After all, the inner groove writing on our first album (1986) was “we live on Indian land,” and that felt like a long time ago by this point.
“Horse Heaven Hills” from Jarred Up (K, 1993) (download):
