If you’ve ever been to Toledo, I’m sorry. Or at least that’s my canned response when people ask where I grew up. I suppose it’s a derivative of what natives say in Ireland about where my family is from: “Mayo, God help us…”

Growing up there was truthfully not as horrific as I often paint it to be, though recalling my youth’s years often conjures a line from Tool’s Maynard Keenan, one about growing up under dead Ohio skies. And for anyone who’s ever lived there, they know the spot-on extent of this overcast truth.

Driving to work this morning, I reached for my bloated iPod and began to play Pearl Jam’s Ten album, one very dear to my heart (and not too shabby musically, as it seems to have stood the test of time thus far). What hit me, for the first time, is just how much I remember being subconsciously affected by the emotional presence of Eddie Vedder’s voice.

Truth be told, I consume far too much music. Being so, I can tend to not linger on albums for prolonged periods, as I used to when I was younger. When you’re ten, having a dozen albums on tape seems like a treasure chest of limitless music. Now I go through at least that many during a single workday. Lost in all of this is my familiarity with every single note and intonation in each song. I’ve traded quality for quantity with regards to my musical appreciation skills.

But as I rounded the bend on I65 South, I was floored at how much sadness and longing seemed to arc from the speakers, with Eddie’s voice groaning for release. And how much I remember connecting with that. Immediately I was transported back to 1993, standing at the end of my driveway waiting, wishing for the school bus to whisk me away from another depressing and leaden dawn. Like remembering the adrenaline rush of your first kiss or the stomach twist of disappointing your parents…I sat in awe of just how ingrained the passionate crooning of dear Eddie was in my early teenage years. It defined many, many months in my life, and the aching in his voice will forever be linked to my often confusing (and depressing) pre-teen experience.

So whether Pearl Jam has noteworthy talent for evoking such raw emotion in their music or whether I simply no longer pay close heed to the poignant underpinnings of today’s albums, I miss having that relationship with my music. Like reconnecting with a lost friend, the sting of years gone, the feeling upon meeting again is spectacular. And even seeing those dead Ohio skies every once and awhile still makes me smile. After all, it is where I’m from. God help me.