The Long Ride Home

"Sandman" is Chris Sand, a native of the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana, but not Native; a farm boy who used breakdancing and bowling to escape rural isolation; a born rapper who learned guitar at age 17 and decided that Folk music was his to re-create in any way he saw fit. On The Long Ride Home, his fourth album, Sandman follows his western muse throughout; when taking stock of our home on the range in this new era of homeland security, he provides a much- needed dose of Woody Guthrie-style reverence and irreverence. The Long Ride Home is largely an autobiographical piece tracing his own road to redemption: Dark and strangely uplifting, somehow both simple and mysterious. Sandman doesn't settle for straddling the fence between hip hop and country musicŠhe leaps through it, untangles himself and uses the barbed wire as a lasso to pull together two distant planets. Ultimately, though, it's just Sandman's guitar and lyrics, (and an occasional whistle solo), that make this an album worth wondering about; humor and pain mix in a hobo stew that sustains us through the journey.