Songwriter Storyteller Series

On episode two of Songwriter Storyteller, Brian Pritchard sits down again with his dad, songwriter Chris Pritchard, to dig into "Somewhere Tonight." Brian could pull this song out of his head without even looking it up. Chris believes he wrote it in 1987, recording the first demo on a 50-key toy keyboard he'd bought for his kids, for his brother Peter's band to take on a planned trip to France. The song imagines a lonely driver who hears the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" on the radio and starts talking back to it. As a drummer, Brian geeks out over the math-rock-style meter shift that opens that conversation. Chris also explains his "patented Chris Pritchard" section, the late-in-the-song surprise he keeps putting back in, no matter who tells him it doesn't work.

In the first episode of Songwriter Storyteller, host Brian Pritchard sits down with his father, songwriter Chris Pritchard, to unpack the true story behind "On the Road to California," a song Chris wrote in the mid-1970s while serving in the Army, for a friend hoping to win back a girlfriend who'd left for California. What starts as a simple breakup song turns into a surprising story involving the Jesus movement, wartime uncertainty overseas, and one lyric line Chris still isn't sure he loves. Brian and Chris dig into the song's music-first origins, its shift from a minor to a major key at the very end, and why this particular song became a bridge across generations of Pritchard songwriters. Along the way, Chris shares how he's been feeding his decades-old home demos into AI on Suno.com, just for the fun of finally hearing them "produced." It's the first stop in a lifelong catalog of songs, stories, and family history.