Dreams Run High Part III: Time Moves On
About this track
Dreams Run High, from New York-based indie musicians Smoke Ring Days, traces the musical ascent of fictional songwriter Ruby and her band from eager adolescents to world-weary road warriors, finding along the way changes both longed for and unexpected, all of which shake and reshape their definition of success. An avatar for the duo’s own nuanced trajectory, and, as one pundit recently opined, “the unique story of a million bands,” the EP is a cautionary tale of realizing your most heartfelt hopes, only to find them not exactly as you’d envisioned. And the story of how one stroke of luck and someone who truly believes in you can change it all, as Ruby and countless others like her seek success, lose focus, and, ultimately, find themselves within a caring community of others, bound together by all that creating music can bring to life, even as fame’s flower fades and the cost of choices made and roads not taken weigh heavy on the heart. Written over the course of a full cycle of seasons, the corresponding four-song suite illustrates Ruby’s evocative evolution, one colored by love, loss, remorse, renewal, and an ever-present aching to express the woundedness and wonder experienced at every age, a sojourn which brings fire and fullness to her searching soul. Dreams captures Ruby’s innermost emotions, feelings which find voice, figuratively and literally, both in beginning a band and in returning to her roots to become the ‘symphony, all in me’ - where it all began. We are simply lucky to be along for the ride.