Comments Off on What’s In a Name?

Author: admin Posted On: December 1st, 2011 In:LA

Pretty dramatic picture, wouldn’t you say? Well, at least it is to us. This is an actual picture of the actual bridge (that did not have an actual roaring tornado in the background) from whence we took our name.

 

It was around 1991 or so. We were driving the Kansas Turnpike from Lawrence back to Topeka when we were literally struck by it. We’d driven under that confounded bridge possibly hundreds of times…but this time…we BOTH saw it at the SAME TIME: The Lecompton Alternate. Not your ordinary “driving under a bridge” occurrence, one of us looked at the other and said, “That would be an awesome name for a band.” And it would have been, although in subsequent days it became something much more.

 

Neither of us had any idea why something as nondescript as a block-painted name on an old bypass would take on such a transformative significance. It was as if “The Alternate” had been there forever just waiting to be discovered…the object never before truly “known” that suddenly took on a life of its own.   And thereafter, no matter how engaged we might be in conversation, or the music, or our own thoughts, we’d find our gaze locking on the letters “Lecompton Alternate” each and every time we passed under that bridge, in an act of mystical acknowledgement.

 

For us, “The Alternate” represents the magic in truly seeing something in a different way…of honoring details that might have otherwise gone unnoticed and giving them power…and of taking the road less traveled.