As the 1960s progressed, some folkies remained purists and stuck to their lane; some switched to rock & roll and joined the jet set; a few brave souls, much like Robert Frost (or the Donner party), took a road less traveled.

Tim Buckley grew up listening to a much wider variety of music than your average kid. While his classmates were bopping to jukebox pop, Buckley was surrounded by Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, and Hank Williams. When the folk boom hit in the early 60s, he formed a small group with high school friends and began writing original material with bandmate Larry Beckett, some of which would later appear on his first few albums.

Buckley lived on the East Coast but knew he needed to play in California, where the folk clubs of Los Angeles beckoned. Soon after, Elektra Records also beckoned.

His debut for Elektra contained lovely psych-folk songs, but nothing too out of the ordinary in terms of song structure, vocals, or instrumentation. This would change with his second album as Buckley began to experiment, pushing the boundaries of the standard verse-chorus-verse form and lengthening some of the songs beyond the usual three or four minutes. He also began to employ his four-octave range.

All the rules went out the window for his third album, 1969’s Happy Sad, which contained only six songs, two of which exceeded 10 minutes. He abandoned his trippy folk sound and lyrics for a jazzier and more personal record, now backed by a combo which included upright bass and vibraphone. “Buzzin’ Fly” dated back to his high school days but fit right in with the rest of the record, grounding it amidst the longer flights of fancy. His vocals swooped and soared, playing off the other instruments in the band.

Buckley had found the freedom he was searching for.

Things just got weird after that. Further experiments saw melody disappear, choruses disappear, strange vocal exercises, and a departure into sexually explicit (for the time) folky funk-rock. Buckley lost most of his audience along the way, but he didn’t seem to care, wanting nothing but to make his own music in his own way. Which is also how he lived his life, driving recklessly, not taking care of himself, burning bridges, and finally dying of a drug overdose at the age of 28.

More traveled or less traveled, some roads we choose can fulfill our souls, but some can destroy us.

So remember how the sun shone down… with Tim Buckley.